State officials
and educators have pointed out that it is impossible to prohibit teachers from
giving private lessons, because the demand and supply both have been existing
in the society, and that it would be better to control, and not prohibit
tutoring.

The
proposal to prohibit tutoring has been made after many parents complained that
their children have been forced to go to extra classes, or their children will
be persecuted by the teachers. Local education departments have ordered schools
to not allow their teachers to give private tuitions without the agreement of
student’s parents.

However,
many state officials and educators have pointed out that it is impossible to
prohibit tutoring. Teachers need to organize extra classes because they need to
take extra work to earn more money, when the official wage paid by the state
cannot feed their families. Meanwhile, many students have the demand for
attending extra classes in order to improve their learning capability.

Tran Thi
Kim Thanh, Deputy Director of the HCM City Education and Training Department,
said at the working session with the supervisors from the National Assembly’s
Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children; several days ago, that “people
now generally agree with the tutoring, and that the city’s authorities have
been well controlling the tutoring. The local education department regularly
takes unexpected inspection tours to extra classes. If teachers open extra
classes at their homes, they must report to their school headmasters about the
numbers of students, learning conditions and the tuition fees.”

A member of
the supervision team said that it is impossible to prohibit teachers from
giving private lessons, because teachers cannot live on their official salaries
they receive from the state budget. However, he expressed worry that problems
would arise in the relation between teachers and students, once money appears
in the relation. It may happen that teachers ask students to do very difficult
exercises, and if students cannot solve the problems, they will have to go to
extra classes.

“Previously,
private lessons were only given to bad students. Nowadays, even excellent
students are also asked to go to extra classes,” he said.

In fact,
parents have every reason to worry about the tutoring in massive scale. A lot
of parents complain they do not have money to pay for extra class fees. Students
have been burdened with too many lessons. They have to go to school both in the
morning and afternoon, and they still have to go to extra classes in the
evening. Psychologists have warned that all work and no play will badly affect
children.

Teacher’s incomes too low

According
to the HCM City Finance Department, the average income of a teacher in HCM City,
which includes official salary and allowances, is 3.8-4.5 million dong a month.

Hua Ngoc
Thuan, Deputy Chair of HCM City People’s Committee said “all teachers complain that
their income is not high enough to cover their living, especially newly
graduated teachers.” It is clear that with the current income levels, teachers
find it hard to live in HCM
City, where everything is
getting more expensive, even though the city’s authorities have been trying to
increase the pay to teachers.

“We should
think of raising teacher’s salaries to the levels which are high enough for
teachers to reproduce the labor power. One working teacher needs to feed one
person,” he said.

Currently,
besides the salaries paid from the state budget, HCM City
is giving allowances to teachers in remote areas (600,000 dong per person) and
to teachers of nursery schools (300,000 dong per person per month).

According
to the HCM City Education and Training Department, there are 63,976 teachers.

C. V