Recently, Quynh Luu 2 High School (Quynh Luu) held a meeting of the school's Parents' Association to review the association's expenses in the 2022-2023 school year. Accordingly, in the past year, the school's Parents' Association estimated to collect 110,000 VND from each student. With a total of 1,801 students in the school, the total association fund revenue for the year is more than 198 million VND. This amount is planned to be spent on 23 items during the school year, of which the largest expense is over 20 million VND, including expenses for the Parents' Association congress at the beginning of the year and expenses for graduation exam support.
In fact, according to the report on revenue and expenditure of the 2022-2023 school year, the expenditures of the Parents' Representative Board of Quynh Luu 2 High School were implemented close to the budget. However, many expenditures were read out, making many people startled: Expenses for gift distribution and exchange on November 20 were more than 10 million VND, other holidays in the year such as March 8, March 26, October 20 were also approximately 10 million VND; expenses for Lunar New Year gifts were 12 million VND; expenses for supporting 12th grade graduation were 14 million VND, and support for class associations for gasoline activities was 16 million VND...
Regarding the revenue and expenditure of the Parents' Representative Board, according to Circular No. 55/2011/TT-Ministry of Education and Training, the Parents' Representative Board is not allowed to collect donations from students' families that are not voluntary. In addition, there are 8 items that are not directly serving, the Parents' Representative Board is not allowed to collect such as: Protecting school facilities, ensuring school security, supervising students' vehicles, cleaning classrooms, cleaning schools, rewarding school administrators, teachers, and staff, purchasing teaching equipment for administrators, teachers, and staff, supporting management work, organizing teaching and educational activities, repairing, upgrading, and building new school buildings...
According to the guidance documents, the implementation of the revenue and expenditure of Quynh Luu 2 High School has many inappropriate contents. A parent whose child is studying at the school said: I see that the annual revenue of the parents' association is quite a lot, but the expenditure for students is not much, but mainly for school holidays. Is it possible that "the liaison committee has turned into a gift-giving association?" Moreover, there are unreasonable expenses such as fuel expenses and graduation exam expenses. The main expenses are few, but the secondary expenses are many.
Working with the Board of Directors of Quynh Luu 2 High School, teacher Nguyen Ba Tinh - Principal of the school admitted the above incident and immediately requested the Parents' Representative Board to rectify this situation: Through inspection, we found that the Parents' Association had complete records, had regulations, had resolutions, had a revenue and expenditure budget plan and had made public the revenues at the school-wide parent conference. However, in the budget and revenue report, there were only expenses that were not suitable for the target group and the representative of the Parents' Association said that it was due to incorrect wording. For example, it was called expenses for graduation exams but it was expenses to support the volunteer team serving graduation exams.
Currently, the Head of the Parents' Representative Board and the Principal of the previous school year have retired. Learning from experience, this year the school requires the Parents' Representative Board to develop a budget close to reality, with the consent of the school principal. Some expenditures will also not be implemented, such as November 20th expenses, Lunar New Year gifts, New Year greetings to localities in recruitment areas, support for excellent teachers, excellent homeroom teachers, tea and water expenses, meetings, graduation exam support expenses... The expenses of the Representative Board are mainly for rewarding classes and students with high achievements in studying, physical education and sports... With these expenses, this year the Parents' Representative Board is expected to spend nearly 200 million VND.
At the end of September, the Yen Thanh District Department of Education and Training issued a document on the strict implementation of collection fees. In particular, it strictly prohibits units from setting their own collection fees or collecting more than the collection fees that are contrary to current regulations. The Department also clearly states that any individual or unit that intentionally violates current regulations must bear full responsibility.
This move was made right after the Department of Education and Training of Yen Thanh district received information that in the area, there was a class at Do Thanh Primary School No. 2 that had set a floor price of 700,000 VND for each parent to pay for the class to buy a television for the first grade students. Through discussion, Mr. Tran Xuan Tinh - Head of the Department of Education and Training of Yen Thanh district, added: "We are seriously correcting the situation of overcharging in schools and in cases of implementation that are not in line with the policy like Do Thanh Primary School No. 2, we are forced to return the collected amounts if they have been implemented. The collection and expenditure in the spirit of voluntariness must be discussed and agreed upon based on actual needs and must not be leveled."
Currently, in addition to mandatory fees such as tuition, health insurance, and parking fees, the remaining fees at schools are all voluntary and agreed upon. The most common fee is socialized fees based on the approved plans of the schools. The remaining fees, mainly called for by the parents' association, are mainly for classroom activities. At Quynh Luu 4 High School, at the beginning of this school year, a 10th grade parent publicly posted on social media a detailed list of fees for the school year with an amount of more than 8 million VND. With this amount of money, this parent said, "for a farming family that sells all the rice they produce for the whole year, it is not certain that it will be enough to pay for one child to go to school." Of these, the highest revenue is from extra classes of 3,700,000 VND/year, personal insurance of 200,000 VND/student, class fund, school fund, association fund, socialized fund (expected) and board installation fee...
Talking to teacher Ho Van Thanh - Principal of Quynh Luu 4 High School, he said: "This declaration is from a parent in the school but her child is not in grade 10 but in grade 11, so there is some inaccurate information. In fact, the school only implements some collections according to the direction of the Department of Education and Training. The agreed and voluntary collections are only collected on the basis of agreement between the school and the Parents' Representative Board. We have also expressed the view that homeroom teachers do not put pressure on parents to pay money, but advise parents to have a payment plan suitable to their family's conditions. In the case of parents' reflection, we will review the entire grade 10 class and request to stop the collections if they are not in accordance with regulations. In case the teacher does not disseminate the school's policy, he will be reminded."
The implementation of voluntary collections "under the name of the Parents' Association" is currently also causing a lot of negative public opinion, especially when the Parents' Association implements the collection without discussion and agreement. Most recently, parents of class 8H - Ha Huy Tap Secondary School (Vinh city) shared a notice in a private group when the Parents' Association of this class requested parents in the class to pay 700,000 VND each to buy uniforms and stage a performance for the class to prepare for Vietnamese Teachers' Day, November 20. It is worth mentioning that during the implementation process, some parents in the class opposed this policy because "the amount of money spent is too high". There are families with many children going to school, and at the beginning of the year, they have collected many other fees, spending 700,000 VND on this is a bit much. However, despite giving a reason, the Association representative still reiterated the policy and hoped that parents would "try a little harder".
Thus, in the name of the Parents Association, under the name of "voluntary", once implemented in an inhumane, incompatible with the common ground, a policy that is not wrong will be transformed and become distorted. And, it is understandable and sympathetic that parents "complain".
Regarding the many spontaneous collections under the name of the Parents' Association, Mr. Nguyen Trong Hoan - Chief of Office of the Department of Education and Training said: Circular 55 has clearly guided the organization, tasks, rights, responsibilities, activities and funding of the Parents' Association, the Head of the Parents' Association. In addition, it is stipulated that the Head of the Parents' Association must agree with the principal to decide on the plan to use the supported and sponsored funds and only use them after the entire Parents' Association of the school agrees.
Therefore, with all the income and expenditure of the class and school representatives, the school board needs to check and supervise to avoid wrong collection and expenditure. In addition, the income and expenditure must have a specific plan based on the consensus and agreement of parents in the class and school, to avoid creating bad public opinion in society.
To rectify this situation, from the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, the Nghe An Department of Education and Training has organized inspections of the revenue and expenditure of operating expenses of the Parent-Teacher Association at a number of schools in the districts of Quynh Luu, Yen Thanh, Thanh Chuong and required the Parent-Teacher Associations of the units to comply with the approved year-end activity plan of the Association.
