Apr 24, 2012

Vietnam - Urban parents spend big money to scramble for seats at prestigious schools


VietNamNet Bridge – Every parent wants to send their children to prestigious schools believed to provide high quality education. However, as the number of schools is limited, parents have to scramble for the seats at the schools by paying big moneys.

The number of targeted schools and the sums of money parents have to pay for every seat at “star schools” have both been increasing unceasingly. Star schools have been defined as the schools which can meet the national standards, and the schools for the gifted, gathering the best students in the localities.

There exist the “professional rings” which act as the intermediaries between parents and schools, helping parents successfully enroll in the schools.

One of the most popular tricks that the intermediaries always advise parents to do is to register permanent residence for the children in the localities, where the targeted schools are situated.

PTH, a parent in Dong Da district in Hanoi, said that in early April, she spent 10 million dong to “solicit” for a seat at KT Primary School. PTH said that she was lucky because she did not have to pay too much money, while other parents had to pay more, about 15-20 million dong.

According to H, there are different ways to approach the board of management of schools. In general, every teacher of the school has a “quota” of one seat for his relatives at the schools. If parents can contact the teachers and pay the teachers for the seats, they would not have to pay intermediaries.

Meanwhile, “brave” parents would come to see headmasters of the schools directly and pay the headmasters for the seats. If parents do not have any relations that can help approach headmasters of teachers, they would have to ask for the help of intermediaries. In this case, parents would have to pay higher, because they have to pay intermediaries as well.

Also according to H, KT school is just the second choice. She wants KL School more. However, she was told that the price for a seat at KL is very high at 2000 dollars, or 40 million dong, which is unaffordable by her.

Besides, students can easily choose the schools they want, if they parents are the big donors to the schools, or their parents have good relations with local authorities’ officials or state agencies.

Of course, no matter which way parents follow to approach the seats of the prestigious schools, they will also have to spend big moneys to obtain what they want.

In fact, parents not only have to pay to enroll their children in star schools, but they also have to pay to put the children into “good classes”, which means the classes run by qualified teachers and gather selected students of the schools

TM, a neighbor of H, said that last year, she spent 2 million dong to a teacher, so that the teacher accepted the daughter to her class.

“When you successfully enroll in a good school, you would just go a half way. You will still need to find a good class for your child as well,” she said.

In fact, the prices for seats at prestigious schools are different. However, school teachers or headmasters would never tell parents how much they have to pay for the seats. Therefore, parents always have to guess how much a seat costs.

AH, whose daughter is going to HB School, a well-known school in HCM City, said that at first, she gave a teacher of the school an envelope with 3 million dong inside. However, the envelope was returned back to AH, which made her think that her daughter would not have the opportunity to enroll in the school.
However, when she gave the envelope with 7 million dong inside, the daughter was accepted to the school immediately.

Source: Lao dong



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