Preschools return tuition fees collected in excess of regulations

(Baonghean.vn) - This is one of the contents that the Director of the Department of Education and Training requested the Vinh City People's Committee to implement after discovering a number of violations in the process of collecting tuition fees for preschool students.

Specifically, the Department of Education and Training has just issued Document No. 2237/SGDĐT - TTr dated November 1, 2017 on the request to handle the results of the inspection of the implementation of revenue and expenditure at the beginning of the 2017 - 2018 school year in Vinh City.

In this document, the Director of the Department of Education and Training requested the City People's Committee to direct Quang Trung 1 Kindergarten and Doi Cung Kindergarten to return the amount exceeding the regulations in Decision No. 89/2016/QD-UBND dated December 29, 2016 of the People's Committee of Nghe An province on the regulation of tuition fees in public educational institutions under the management of Nghe An province from semester 2 of the 2016-2017 school year to the 2020-2021 school year (collecting tuition fees for 7 days of school from August 23 to 30, 2017).

In addition, the Director of the Department of Education and Training also proposed to take disciplinary action against relevant organizations and individuals for not ensuring compliance with regulations in collecting, spending, and managing finances. At the same time, continue to inspect, review, and request kindergartens in the area that have collected more than the amount that must be returned to parents.

Class time of students at Quang Trung 1 Kindergarten. Photo: SH

Regarding this incident, previously, on October 26, 2017, Nghe An Electronic Newspaper had an article “Many kindergartens in Vinh City collect tuition fees against regulations.”. Thereby, it was reflected that from August 23 to 30, although it was the time for school to start according to the Decision of the Provincial People's Committee, Hung Dung 1 Kindergarten, Hung Loc Kindergarten and many other kindergartens in Vinh City still collected tuition fees for students at the holiday tuition rate. With this tuition rate, students have to pay nearly 3 times more tuition fees per day than the regulation.

One of the reasons why schools "cross the line" to illegally collect fees is based on Decision No. 5642/UBND - TCKH & GDĐT of Vinh City People's Committee on: Implementation of revenue and expenditure for the 2017-2018 school year in educational institutions. In this document, Vinh City allows schools to organize the school opening ceremony in August to be calculated by "collecting tuition on holidays".

Currently, through investigation, although the violations are quite clear, the kindergartens in Vinh City have not yet refunded tuition fees to parents. At that time, the whole city had nearly 26,000 kindergarten students and at least 50% of the students in the schools had returned to school and paid tuition fees of 35,000 VND/day (while according to Decision 89, the tuition fees in Vinh City are from 190,000 VND - 250,000 VND/month - depending on the area)./.

PV