Nghe An: More than 100 billion VND in support money has not reached thousands of students

(Baonghean) - Although the first semester of the 2016-2017 school year is almost over, there are still thousands of students who have not received support according to the policy, most of whom are still in mountainous districts.

School owes money for students' meals

Na Loi Kindergarten (Ky Son) has 164 students and is located at 6 different school locations. Although the number is not large, because there are too many separate locations and the area is difficult to travel to, in previous years only students at the main school were organized to board. This school year, with the desire for the children to attend school regularly and receive good care, the school has organized boarding for all students.

Regarding funding, for children in remote villages, the school takes money from the lunch support for 5-year-old children (according to Decision No. 239/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister) and lunch money for 3-4 year-old children (according to Decision No. 60/2011/QD-TTg) for border communes, highlands, islands, communes and villages with special difficulties... For students living nearby, the school pays support money to parents and every month parents contribute money, rice, and firewood for the school to cook for the children.

Class time of students at Ky Son High School.

After nearly a semester of organizing mass boarding, teacher Le Thi Hue Anh - Principal of the school happily said that the quality of teaching and learning has improved significantly. Parents can rest assured because their children are cared for attentively and carefully, according to preschool standards.

However, besides the joy, the school leaders also had some “hard to say” things, when the first semester ended but the lunch support money for the children had not yet arrived. Therefore, to provide meals for the students, the school had to owe money for food from the suppliers.

Sharing about this, the school principal added: Knowing that the school is in difficulty, the suppliers do not require urgent payment. However, “The end of the year and the beginning of the new year”, we hope to soon receive funding to pay off all debts and return the money so that parents have more money to celebrate Tet.

According to Mr. Nguyen Hong Hoa - Head of the Department of Education and Training of Ky Son district: Up to this point, the total funding need to support lunch money for children in the entire district is nearly 2.4 billion VND. Due to not being able to provide in time, 24/24 kindergartens are having to buy food on credit, which is very difficult. That also greatly affects the organization of meals for children at school, making it impossible for schools to be proactive in purchasing food.

In Tuong Duong district, people in Nga My, Luong Minh and Huu Khuong communes said: Up to this point, the implementation of the regime under Decree 49 (then Decree 74 and now Decree 86) on exemption and reduction of tuition fees and support for study costs for preschool, primary and secondary school students for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 has not been implemented. The total amount to be paid by the 3 communes is nearly 1 billion VND.

According to the Planning and Finance Department of Tuong Duong district, the current payment of study support for students is still slow, due to a number of reasons such as: Coordination and integration between levels and functional sectors are not yet smooth, especially in the work of reviewing and preparing documents to approve beneficiaries. That makes the work of synthesizing and advising on solutions slower than planned.

The schools are also slow in comparing the policies, leading to the synthesis of documents to advise the District People's Committee to resolve the additional policies related to staff, teachers and students slower than required. In addition, there are still some policies of the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years that the province has not yet supplemented enough funding, so the district cannot allocate funds for the budget units.

Need to resolve once and for all

Currently, there are many support policies for students, especially students in mountainous areas and disadvantaged areas. These are the lunch support policies according to Decree 60 and Decree 239 for preschool children in border areas, islands, communes, and villages with special difficulties or parents who are poor households according to regulations or orphans with no support or disabled, economically disadvantaged with a support level of 120,000 VND/month and are received according to actual study time.

In addition, there is a policy of tuition exemption and reduction, and support for study costs according to Decree 86 for subjects such as: Preschool children and students with disabilities, handicaps, economic difficulties, no one to take care of them, students who are children of non-commissioned officers and soldiers serving for a term in the people's armed forces; students of the selection system, students of ethnic boarding schools...

Meal of students at Huu Khuong Secondary School for Ethnic Minorities (Tuong Duong).

According to these regulations, compiled by the Planning and Synthesis Department (Department of Education and Training), currently, thousands of students at all levels in the province have not received tuition exemption or study cost support according to Decree 86 of the second semester of the 2015-2016 school year and the first semester of the 2016-2017 school year with a total amount of more than 100 billion VND. In addition, preschool students in the province have not received lunch support for the past 10 months. Among these, the most are in districts such as: Ky Son (6.3 billion VND), Tuong Duong (4.5 billion VND) and Thanh Chuong (3.5 billion VND)...

Ms. Le Thi My Dung - Planning and Finance Department (Department of Education and Training) said: The children's lunch money was paid late because in 2016, Decree 60 and Decree 239 were about to expire. Therefore, instead of the budget for supporting students being allocated a semester in advance like in 2015 and earlier, this year, at the end of the year, the sector will synthesize the actual needs of the districts and then rebalance. At this time alone, 20 billion VND (in August) has been balanced for some districts. However, it is possible that the districts have not completed the paperwork and have not paid all of it to the schools.

Regarding the payment of tuition exemptions, reductions and partial support, since 2016 is the first year of implementation, the time from the issuance of the Decree (May 2012) to the issuance of the guidance document (March 2016) is too slow. Furthermore, in this school year, the tuition collection was only approved in December, so there is no specific collection level yet.

Objectively, this is a source provided by the Central Government, so up to this point, the Department of Education and Training has only approved it for high school and non-public levels. Regarding the support funding according to Decree 74 and Decree 49 before, the Department of Education and Training affirmed that it had fully compiled and sent it to the Department of Finance and had provided enough resources, the delay was due to the localities.

Among the students waiting to receive tuition and study support, thousands have graduated and left the locality. Therefore, if the funds are not received in time, it will lead to losses or students may not receive support if there is no transparency in payment.

My Ha