The 'burden' called socialization

Many feelings

Having a child studying in grade 10 at Huynh Thuc Khang High School, Ms. NLH was quite surprised when recently, at a parent meeting, she heard the teacher and the representative of the parent association announce that this year's socialized money for her child would be more than 1 million VND/child. According to her, this amount is 3 times more than the years when her children were in primary or secondary school.

Meanwhile, she and many other parents do not clearly understand what the above money will be spent on, who will supervise. This is also a large amount of money for many families with difficult economic conditions and many children going to school.

Class time of students at Huynh Thuc Khang High School. Photo: My Ha

On social networks, these days, information is also being shared about Ha Huy Tap High School's fundraising campaign.socializefrom parents with an amount of over 1 million VND/student. Although knowing that socialization is a policy of the education sector, schools are allowed to collect, many parents are still concerned, even skeptical about the school's socialized collection.

Parent D.LQ also said: In my opinion, we should not collect socialized fees but continue to collect construction fees like before, the amount of regulations, the amount of money paid. Calling socialized fees "no reward, no punishment" seems heavy and is a big deal every year. Another parent said, "Every school is like that. Just the fund alone has 4-5 types of funds: school fund, parent fund, class fund"...

Not only parents, but also teachers, especially homeroom teachers, feel pressured when implementing the collection of fees at the beginning of the year. That is also the reason why, in recent years, instead of homeroom teachers announcing the collection and expenditure, many teachers have asked the parents' association to "shoulder" the implementation and replace the homeroom teachers in doing this arduous task.

Huynh Thuc Khang High School mobilizes social resources to renovate the entire old classroom block with an estimated budget of more than 2.5 billion VND. Photo: My Ha

A homeroom teacher in Vinh city shared: “Socialized fees are a mandatory fee and the school assigns a quota for each class, based on the number of students in the class. But clearly, in a class, not all students have the same conditions, there are well-off students, but there are also students with difficulties. Therefore, when implementing, we ourselves have to consider and calculate. If we equalize, it is against the policy. But if we do not collect, teachers will not complete their tasks.”

No leveling

Speaking to Nghe An Newspaper, teacher Phan Xuan Phan - Principal of Huynh Thuc Khang High School said: Up to this point, the school has just approved the policy of mobilizing socialization for parents at the parent meeting at the beginning of the second semester. However, the school has not implemented how much and how to collect. If in any case, the homeroom teacher has collected from parents, it is against the regulations.

The reason why Huynh Thuc Khang High School has not yet implemented socialized collection is because the school's socialized collection plan for the 2022-2023 school year has not been approved by the Department of Education and Training. However, the school has also developed a collection plan with an expected total socialized collection for this school year of 2.5 billion VND.

Most schools are mobilizing social resources to renovate and repair classrooms. Photo: My Ha

According to the Principal of Huynh Thuc Khang High School, the amount mobilized this year is not higher than previous years and will be used to repair and renovate the school buildings and facilities in Huynh Thuc Khang High School (the old building has been used for 20 years with many items degraded and damaged) (more than 2.6 billion VND).

In addition, it will be used to renovate the school's electrical system (300 million VND), install ceilings, and install electricity for the leadership meeting room and principal's office (100 million VND). The school will also use more than 500 million VND to pay off debts for the renovation, upgrading, and construction of Huynh Thuc Khang High School (the old project has been completed). Of the total estimated expenditure of more than 3.6 billion VND of the school, more than 1.1 billion VND is the amount of socialized money collected from the previous school year and 2.5 billion VND is expected to be new revenue.

When asked about this collection level, if the minimum "leveling" for more than 2,300 students in the whole school is applied, each student must pay at least more than 1 million VND in socialized fees per student, teacher Phan Xuan Phan added: Before implementing socialized collection, the school has taken many steps from reviewing the facilities, having the assessment of the City People's Committee, making estimates and submitting a plan to request socialized collection to the Department of Education and Training. The entire amount of socialized money collected will be submitted to the treasury and collected and spent according to regulations. The school is currently planning to collect but must have discussion, agreement and support from parents. There will be no leveling and there will be a policy of exemption and reduction for students in difficult circumstances and students from poor households.

Through understanding in many schools, not only Huynh Thuc Khang High School, but also most high schools and many kindergartens, primary schools and secondary schools, the collection of socialized money is mainly used to purchase teaching equipment, upgrade, repair or build new schools. Regarding the reason why the level of socialization between schools is different, partly due to the scale of construction projects. In the case that the school calls for a lot of public investment, the contribution of parents will be somewhat less.

At Kim Lien High School, according to the socialized collection plan that the Department has just approved for the school, this year, the school is expected to collect about 700 million VND. Of which, the amount to purchase additional computers is expected to be about 200 million VND and the rest will be used to repair facilities and rebuild degraded fences. Teacher Duong Van Son - Principal of the school also shared: Each year, the school's regular expenditure source is not much and if we only rely on this source of expenditure to upgrade and repair facilities, it is impossible. Therefore, schools are forced to mobilize socialized resources. Our school, this year, is expected to spend about 2 billion VND to repair facilities, but of that, 1.5 billion VND is allocated by the district budget to reduce some of the mobilization costs.

A new classroom building is under construction at Ha Huy Tap High School. Part of the construction cost will be raised from social sources. Photo: My Ha

This year, Ha Huy Tap High School is also planning to mobilize 2.5 billion VND in funding for the 2022-2023 school year and use it to invest in facilities. Of which, 200 million VND will be spent to pay off the debt for the project to renovate and upgrade the 3-storey school building, 800 million VND will be spent to pay off the debt for the project to renovate and upgrade the fence, gymnasium and sports field according to the decision of the City People's Committee from 2019 and 1.5 billion VND to implement the project to build a new 3-storey school building and auxiliary items.

Teacher Cao Thanh Bao - Principal of the school also said: If we pay all the debts for construction and new construction, this year Ha Huy Tap High School needs to mobilize more than 13 billion VND and to have enough money, we have to mobilize for many years. The school also uses other sources such as savings budget, tuition sources, extra teaching and learning sources... but each year we can only mobilize about 700 million VND. The current difficulty is that for new construction projects, although the State partially supports, the remaining part, the schools have to implement counterpart funds. If we do not mobilize social resources, the school will not know where to look to repair and build classrooms...

Need to be harmonious, consider carefully

Regarding the issue of socialization, at this time, the Department of Education and Training is still continuing to approve the socialization plan of public high schools across the province. Ms. Vo Thi Thanh Binh - Head of the Planning and Finance Department (Department of Education and Training) said: In recent years, the documents regulating revenue and expenditure in schools have been strictly implemented by the Education sector, so most schools, before implementing the collection, including the socialized collection, have done it in accordance with the regulations and this is an authorized collection.

On the Education sector side, to limit collection, the Department has also put forward a viewpoint in approving socialization, which is to only approve projects such as repairing classrooms, toilets, purchasing additional teaching equipment and not using socialized resources to purchase minimum teaching equipment. During the implementation process, schools are absolutely not allowed to collect on a level basis, not allowed to collect maximum or minimum fees, but must have discussions between parents and schools, depending on the conditions of parents, students, and local conditions.

According to the guidelines, the collection of social fees must be carried out in 5 steps and must be supervised and publicized for parents to know and discuss.

Class time of students at Ha Huy Tap High School. Photo: My Ha

The current problem in schools is to consider how to collect fees in a harmonious way, which projects need priority investment and repair, and which projects are urgent. If massive investment and repair are made, socialization will become a burden for schools every year, as well as a burden for parents and students. From here, there are also shortcomings in implementation, propaganda, and mobilization, leading to unreasonable or unavoidable situations of exploitation and overcharging in socialization...