Vietnam - High inflation burdening parents on the schools season

LookAtVietnam - The products used in the education sector have been cited as the ones which see the highest price increases, by 24.14 percent. It is now the time for parents to move heaven and earth to arrange money for their children’s new academic year, which will come in two weeks.

Though the official opening school day is September 5, students have begun going back to school since August 15.

Tuitions “dancing”

Non-state schools have unanimously raised the tuitions and additional charges, while more than 40 cities and provinces apply the new tuition levels this academic year.

In Hanoi, though parents all well understand that the tuitions increase year after year, they still have got shocks with the new tuition levels set up by non-state schools.

A parent, who has a daughter going to the first grade of the Doan Thi Diem non-state school, said that she would have to pay 17.4 million dong in total to fund the daughter’s study.

These include 9 million dong in tuitions for three months (3 million dong x 3 months), 3.6 million dong in day-boarding fee (1.2 million dong x 3 months), 2.1 million dong in coach fee (700,000 dong x 3 months), 1 million dong in contribution to upgrade school’s material facilities, 210,000 dong in healthcare insurance, 50,000 dong in student insurance and 500,000 dong in school uniform.

The parents of the students of the Le Quy Don Primary School in Hanoi have received the notice that the new tuition level is 2.2 million dong a month, while the day-boarding fee is 1 million dong and the bus fee 1.1-1.6 million dong. Besides, parents also have to pay 2 million dong per annum to the school development fund, and a lot of other kinds of expenses.

The Brendon primary school in Hanoi asks parents to pay tuitions per semester within 10 days before every semester. This means that parents have to pay a big sum of money at once at the beginning of the new school year, estimated at 30 million dong, including 18 million dong in tuitions.

“N”, a parent, whose son is a second grader of the Doan Thi Diem Primary School complains that the school should collect fees monthly, while the collection at once will burden parents. The Hanoi Education and Training Department has also requested schools not to collect too much money at once at the beginning of the school year.

Too many kinds of additional fees

A lot of parents complain about the existence of too many kinds of additional fees which prove to be unaffordable by many families.

A parent, whose daughter goes to the Nguyen Thai Binh High School in HCM City, complained that the school’s headmaster has asked students to change the uniforms this year, which he believes a big unnecessary waste.

In the 2010-2011 school year, female students’ uniform included white shirt and dark blue trousers. However, in this school year, they are asked to wear skirts, even though the shirts and trousers made last year are still good. Meanwhile, the prices of uniforms are overly high.

“I have to spend 600-700,000 dong for three skirts and two pairs of shoes,” he complained.

A student of the Tran Khai Nguyen High School in district 5 in HCM City, said that the school has introduced two new samples of uniform and students can choose one of the two. This means that there will be three models of uniforms to exist, including one old model and the two new models. Meanwhile, the uniforms sold by schools are always much more expensive than the ones available on the market.

Vo Ngoc Thu, Head of the district 5’s education sub-department said it is no need to force students to buy too many uniforms which will burden parents.

Thanh Mai

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