Electronic contact book:Expensive but not worth it

Deposit hundreds but only get a few messages

The electronic contact book provides parents and students with a convenient tool to track their learning progress, grades, conduct, and important school announcements. The Vnedu application software for students in Nghe An province also integrates other applications such as comments, health care, chat, self-study, timetables, service registration, etc.

To use the Electronic Contact Book effectively, schools must regularly update information so that parents can easily monitor and grasp the situation of their children at school. However, in reality, this is not the case.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong - living in Truong Vinh ward said: I have 2 children in junior high school and high school, both of them were instructed by the school to use the Electronic Contact Book. However, in reality, in recent years, the book's main purpose is to check scores. Occasionally, the school has a few messages announcing school absences or some other content related to the school's general activities. Other features, when I checked, all showed "no data".

According to this parent, with a fee of 100,000 VND/student, although the amount is not much, the current effectiveness is too little. There was a year when both of her children attended the same school and used the same electronic contact book app with the same registered phone number. However, she still had to pay 200,000 VND/2 children. When she asked the homeroom teacher about this question, she was told that because the two children had two different contact books, they were not exempted.

The question of the effectiveness of the Electronic Contact Book has also been a concern for parents for many years. Recently, on social networks, when this content was introduced, in a short time there were nearly 2,000 comments with nearly 200 shares. Most parents questioned the quality of use and price of the service. In which, the most common opinion is that they only receive a few messages from the school and scores. The rest, other notifications from the class, parents receive via Zalo group class. Parent Tran Van Nam in Van An commune also frankly shared: A year only gets a few messages costing a few hundred dong but charges 100,000 dong. Too expensive!

Sharing the same view, many parents believe that the Electronic Contact Book has not yet met expectations. The two-way interaction feature is almost non-existent, information is mainly transmitted one-way from teachers to parents, while urgent announcements or detailed exchanges still have to be made via social networks.

Features not yet exploited

Talking about the use of electronic contact books in schools, Mr. Le Van Bang - Principal of Dien Chau 4 High School shared about his own benefits: "We know that social networks such as Zalo and Facebook help make communication convenient, but when there is a power outage, 4G signal loss or technical problems, the electronic contact book is still an effective tool." He cited: "After storm No. 10, the entire district lost power, teachers could not contact via social networks. Thanks to the electronic contact book, we only need an SMS message to notify thousands of students of school closures in a few minutes."

In addition, according to Mr. Bang, the highlight of the Electronic Contact Book is the security and personalization of information. Parents can only see their children's learning results, no longer having to "see the general score" like before. "Previously, we had to wait for the teacher to summarize and send it to the class group, but now parents can see their children's test scores for each subject immediately after entering the scores," said Mr. Bang.

Although there is no official report, currently, through understanding, nearly 90% of schools in the delta have deployed electronic contact books. However, the level of exploitation is still different between levels. At the secondary level, electronic books are mainly used to look up exam scores, while the function of direct communication between teachers and parents has not yet been effective.

Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Thien - Principal of Ho Xuan Huong Secondary School (Quynh Luu Commune) frankly shared: We have only exploited the score lookup feature, and 2-way communication with parents is still mainly via Zalo, because it is more convenient.

According to Mr. Thien, because parents have to pay a fee to use the Electronic Contact Book, he is very concerned about the low efficiency of the application. Therefore, during the implementation process at Ho Xuan Huong Secondary School, he and an IT teacher at the school had to carefully study the features to be able to apply them in practice.

At the primary level, many schools have not yet clearly seen the urgent need to use electronic contact books. Mr. Vu Phi Son - Principal of Dien Ky Primary School, Duc Chau commune said: "At this level, there are only 2 exams per semester. Teachers can send transcripts to class groups, and parents can look them up very quickly. Because this is a paid service, we have not implemented it yet, due to the difficult economic conditions of many families."

Need to reduceservice price

The fee for using the Electronic Contact Book of 100,000 VND/student/school year is a matter of concern for many parents. They believe that if the Electronic Contact Book only really performs a few basic functions, the current fee is not appropriate.

Doan Thi Ngan, a parent whose child is studying at a secondary school in Vinh City (old), also expressed: If it is just to look up scores and some small information, the fee should be reduced to a few tens of thousands. For each class of 40-50 students, the total cost can be up to 4-5 million VND. For each school with thousands of students, that number is hundreds of millions of VND and multiplied by the whole province is billions.

In addition, many opinions also emphasized that the Electronic Contact Book is only truly effective when all parties are proactive: The school updates information regularly, parents interact actively and the supplier continuously improves the technology. A homeroom teacher expressed: The current software is still quite rigid, with many cumbersome operations. Sending personal information to parents takes a few steps, while sending a Zalo message only takes 5 seconds. If the software is more user-friendly, can integrate Zalo or email, the efficiency will certainly be higher.

With the current quality and the fee of 100,000 VND/year, some Principals also frankly said that, "there is no need to use the Electronic Contact Book in the school". In addition, the supplier needs to review the price when this software has been used for many years and there are not many upgrades over the years.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Nga - Principal of Hung Dung Secondary School (Truong Vinh Ward) said: Nearly 100% of the school's students use the electronic contact book. Although parents rarely complain, we ourselves also find the service price is still high. In previous years, when the supplier came to work with the school, we also proposed: For schools with more than 2,000 students like ours, there should be a discount policy.

Sharing the same opinion, Mr. Tran Viet Phuong - Principal of Nghi Duc Secondary School (Vinh Phu Ward) said: "Even if parents agree to use it, if there are students in the class with difficulties, the collective will support them so that they can use it like their friends. But even so, the price of 100,000 VND/year is still high compared to actual usage. The school has asked the supplier to consider reducing the fee, but so far has not received any response."

The story of the “high price” but low efficiency of the Electronic Contact Book has been mentioned for many years. Meanwhile, users, parents and students have not received a satisfactory answer from the supplier.

According to the reporter's investigation, only in Vinh City (old) there are 42 primary and secondary schools using electronic contact books; only 2 high schools, Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted and Vinh University High School for the Gifted, do not use this service. If we only manually calculate each school has more than 1,500 students, the amount of money collected from electronic contact books in the wards and communes of Vinh City (old) has reached tens of billions of VND.

Through the reporter's investigation, many principals said that with the price of 100,000 VND/student/year, the school will also be "integrated" with a number of other benefits according to the digital transformation policy of the education sector. If there is no electronic contact book for students, the school must buy software such as electronic contact books, electronic transcripts... for tens of thousands of VND/student. This is too much money for the school budget. Meanwhile, if students register to use it, the school will receive this software for free - a long-time principal in the industry added.