Unusual school fees burden parents, who hesitate to complain

Published: 14/09/2009 05:00

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LookAtVietnam – Parents are questioning the number of school fees due at the beginning of the school year.

September 13 was an unlucky day for many parents. On this day, schools met with students’ parents to discuss methods to help students study well in the new school year.

The main topic of discussion, however, was financial. Teachers informed parents of the tuition and fees needed to cover their children’s study.

“We attend the meetings not to discuss fees, we just come to hear how much we have to pay, because it has all been decided beforehand,” said one mother with a daughter studying at Nguyen Du School.

Long lists of fees

The parents of 4A class of Nguyen Thi Dinh Primary School in HCM City were told that besides common fees charged to every student, they will have to pay additional fees, including fees for semester-end tests and writing practice notebooks worth 45,000 dong.

In other classes, parents were asked to pay 300,000 dong per student to purchase an LCD screen television. They also had to pay 100,000 dong each to raise funds for awards given to the most excellent students.

The parents of Le Quang Dinh Primary School in a suburb of HCM City were also asked to pay for things like the bags for keeping test papers, school reports and school reports in English, totaling 250,000 dong.

This does not include the 700,000 dong that parents have to pay for day-boarding students. The school has also urged parents to contribute money for LCD monitors, so that students can have intensive English lessons.

The parents of Kim Dong Primary School found out they needed to pay 30,000 dong per student each month in order to have their lessons extended by 30 minutes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Parents send their children to day-boarding classes must pay 378,000 dong to upgrade the balcony of the school into two classrooms.

Pay up or else

Though none of them have protested the fees publicly, parents are privately calling them “abnormal” and unwarranted.”

One mother who has son studying at Nguyen Du Secondary School in Go Vap district, complained that she could never have imagined so many kinds of school fees, even though she knew parents would need to contribute some extra money to cover educational expenses.

The woman said that she has been asked to pay school fees with very strange names, such as “education sponsor” at 140,000 dong per school year, the “education quality support” at 50,000 dong per month and a class fund fee at 200,000 dong per school year.

The school has plans to purchase a modern audio system worth about 100 million dong. In addition, the school requires 420 million dong per school year to support teaching and learning activities and it intends on obtaining the money from the parents of the school’s 1,700 students.

Parents of Hai Ba Trung Secondary School in District 3 have just been informed that they have to make contribution of 350,000 dong per student to the class fund. However, no one has explained how the money will be used.

Despite their dissatisfaction with unclear school fees, all parents pay. “We have gotten used to paying money to ensure our children’s study. We don’t want to see our children repressed by teachers just because we do not pay,” one parent revealed.

VietNamNet/NLD

Provide by Vietnam Travel

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