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 planned 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 was 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 meeting at the beginning of the year and expenses to support graduation exams.
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 and made many people startled: The expenditure for gift distribution and exchange on November 20 was more than 10 million VND, other holidays in the year such as March 8, March 26, October 20 were also approximately 10 million VND; the expenditure for Lunar New Year gifts was 12 million VND; the expenditure for supporting 12th grade graduation was 14 million VND, the expenditure for supporting the class association for gasoline activities was 16 million VND...
Regarding the collection 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 used for service, 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 learning activities, repairing, upgrading, and building new school buildings, etc.
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 spending on students is not much, but mainly on school holidays. Is it possible that "the liaison committee has turned into a gift-giving association?" Moreover, there are unreasonable expenses such as gasoline 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, regulations, resolutions, a plan for revenue and expenditure estimates and had made public the revenues at the school-wide parent conference. However, in the budget and revenue report, there were only expenditures that were not suitable for the target audience and the representative of the Parents' Association said that this 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' Association and the Principal of the previous school year have retired. Learning from experience, this year the school requires the Parents' Association to develop a budget that is close to reality, with the consent of the school principal. Some spending items will also not be implemented, such as spending on November 20, spending on Lunar New Year gifts, spending on New Year's greetings to localities in recruiting areas, spending on supporting excellent teachers, excellent homeroom teachers, spending on tea and drinks, meetings, supporting graduation exams, etc. The expenses of the Association are mainly for rewarding classes and students with high achievements in studying, physical education, etc. With these expenses, this year the Parents' Association is expected to spend nearly 200 million VND.
At the end of September, the Department of Education and Training of Yen Thanh district 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 televisions for students at the beginning of the year. 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 cases of implementation that are not in line with the policy like Do Thanh Primary School No. 2 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 equalized."
Currently, in addition to mandatory fees such as tuition, health insurance, and parking fees, the remaining fees at schools are all voluntary and negotiated. 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, socialization 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 is currently only implementing 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 the homeroom teacher does not put pressure on parents to pay money, but advises 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 disseminates the policy not in accordance with the school's regulations, he will be reminded".
The implementation of voluntary collections "under the name of the Parents' Association" is currently causing a lot of negative public opinion, especially when the Parents' Association implements the collection without discussion or consensus. 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 that each parent in the class pay 700,000 VND 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 incorrect spirit, inhumanely, and inconsistent 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 collection and expenditure of operating expenses of the Parents' Representative Board at a number of schools in the districts of Quynh Luu, Yen Thanh, Thanh Chuong and required the Parents' Representative Boards of the units to comply with the approved year-end activity plan of the Board.
