At this time, Tuong Son Secondary School (Anh Son) is completing the final stages to complete the administrative building and subject classrooms. The project, with a total value of 12.5 billion VND, is the long-awaited wish of the school's teachers, parents, and students and was mobilized from many different sources, including support calls. This will also be the basis for the school to be recognized as a national standard school, which has been 3 years behind schedule.
Tuong Son Secondary School is one of the schools with many innovations in calling for socialization of education, although the school is located in a special area, with 50% of students being children of parishioners. Moreover, the conditions of the people in the area are still difficult, mainly living on agriculture, with a number of students belonging to poor and near-poor households. Teacher Nguyen Tuan Anh - Principal of the school, shared: "The school has more than 500 students but each year the school can only mobilize about 150 million VND from socialization and prioritizes extremely necessary items such as student parking lots and purchasing some essential items. The remaining expenses for purchasing other equipment, the school calls for from other sources".
Speaking of calling for socialization, 5 years ago, Tuong Son Secondary School was the first school in Anh Son district to equip all classrooms with televisions. Later, the school's experience spread to many other localities in the district. Sharing about this, teacher Truong Thi Quynh - Vice Principal of the school, the person who "initiated" the call for socialization, recalled: "At that time, the 2018 general education program began to be implemented and during the implementation process, I studied the program very carefully and found many new features, in which the student is the center. With this new program, if there are no teaching aids, teaching will not be effective. To organize teaching and assign tasks to students, first of all, the classes must have TVs, and teachers must have computers to connect. Initially, we encouraged teachers, despite the difficulties, to try to equip themselves with a laptop to teach. As for TV, we determined that we could not contribute in the form of socialization of the whole school but needed to call for it."
Teacher Truong Thi Quynh also said that she personally wrote a letter to her former students sharing the difficulties and the urgency of teaching aids and hoping for the help of former students. Teacher Quynh's appeal letter later spread not only in her homeroom class but also to other courses, and after only 3 months the school had enough TVs for all classes. Later, the school also called for many other supports and was successful. As of now, while waiting for the completion of the new classroom, a former student of the school from the 1994-1998 class invested nearly 50 million VND for the school to buy large-screen TVs for group activities.
“In my opinion, to effectively socialize, we should first mobilize material sponsorship rather than money because it is more reliable. Second, in addition to combining fundraising, we should organize homecoming days for students to motivate them. For the collective of teachers, we also need to be responsible, increase sharing, and connect with former students…”, teacher Quynh added.
Nghia Lam Primary School is also a difficult school in Nghia Dan district when 64% of students are ethnic minorities, the number of poor and near-poor students accounts for more than 20%. However, by effectively calling for socialization, in the past two years, the school has implemented many meaningful tasks such as mobilizing more than 200 million VND to build new toilets for students, buying 100% of televisions for all classes, building a cafeteria and a motel for boarding students, and buying more than 20 computers for the IT room.
Through discussion, teacher Nguyen Thi Mai Hien - Principal of the school, said: "Before building a socialization plan, we determined what items were most important to consult with the locality and ask for approval from superiors. In addition, we need to propagate to create consensus among parents. We also determined that during the implementation process, there will be classes that will invest for 5 years, to reduce contributions."
Teacher Nguyen Thi Phuc - Principal of Nghi Hoa Primary School, Cua Lo town also shared her experience in mobilizing donors to support nearly 200 million VND to buy all the dining tables for the boarding school cafeteria, and to build a football field in the school in the 2023 - 2024 school year: "We mobilize socialization in all aspects. However, for parents, to mobilize, the first thing to do is to survey the facilities very specifically, estimate the budget and discuss it publicly, not to level the playing field to create a comfortable mentality, avoid pressure for families.
Mobilizing parents' contributions and implementing the socialization of education is necessary in the context that the whole sector is making efforts to implement the 2018 General Education Program but resources for education are still limited. In recent years, in order to create conditions to attract social resources to invest in education, the Ministry of Education and Training has issued Circular 16/2018/TT-BGDDT regulating the mobilization, reception, management and use of funding from domestic and foreign agencies, organizations and individuals for educational institutions in the national education system. In addition, Circular 55/2011/TT-BGDDT promulgating the Charter of the Parents' Representative Board also clearly stipulates the authority and responsibility of this organization in mobilizing contributions from learners.
In Nghe An, the issue of revenue and expenditure during the school year always receives public attention and is one of the "hot" issues of the education sector. In fact, for effective and transparent implementation, at the beginning of each new school year, the Department of Education and Training has detailed instructions on the implementation of the year-end collection. At the same time, the sector has requested localities and schools to strengthen supervision and inspection, ensure correct collection, correct expenditure, transparency, and avoid overcharging in schools. However, the situation of schools and classes collecting money from parents at too high, equal, or not in accordance with regulations still occurs. Two years ago, the Nghe An Department of Education and Training required a high school in Quynh Luu district to return more than 700 million VND in social mobilization money when the collection was not implemented in accordance with the instructions.
In Nghia Dan district, through discussion, Mr. Nguyen Van Hung - Head of the district's Department of Education and Training, said: This year, educational institutions must publicly post the revenues and contributions at least 7 days before implementation and notify officials, teachers, students, parents, and people to know, implement, and monitor. The posting must clearly state the revenues, collection levels (if any), contributions, objects and purposes of use, expenditure content, expenditure levels, and other notices, if any. In particular, to avoid the situation where some educational institutions are planning to propose socialized revenue levels at the beginning of the new school year without a policy from competent authorities, Nghia Dan District Police also issued a document to strengthen revenue and expenditure management. In particular, it is requested that many relevant departments and branches, especially the Education sector, need to review and rectify educational institutions that collect and spend money, calling for socialization without approval. Absolutely do not let educational institutions in the area make illegal revenue and expenditures, causing pressure and negative public opinion among the people, causing complications in security and order.
Regarding this issue, Mr. Thai Van Thanh - Director of the Department of Education and Training said: "The Department will strengthen the direction of inspection and examination of the revenue and expenditure situation at the beginning of the year, promptly correct the situation of over-collection, wrong collection, handle or propose strict handling of cases of intentional violations of regulations. The industry's viewpoint on voluntary collections is to ensure the principles: transparency, publicity, voluntariness, no regulations on average or minimum collection levels...; spread out the collections, avoid concentrating at the beginning of the year to put pressure on parents.
In 2023-2024, the implementation of the collection is also being considered by localities and schools, and some schools are even planning not to collect it to reduce pressure on parents. At Nguyen Duy Trinh High School (Nghi Loc), teacher Hoang Kim Lien - Principal of the school, said: "In fact, currently, many of the school's facilities have degraded, but we have decided to divide it into many years to reduce pressure on parents. Instead, we have mobilized nearly 1 billion VND in funding to renovate the power lines, build a transformer station for the school and some small items. The school is planning to install air conditioners for the classes to help students have less trouble during the hot season. However, the implementation may be discussed by the classes themselves, depending on the conditions of each class and is absolutely not forced."
Regarding the issue of socialization and mobilizing parents, each school has a different point of view. Teacher Dang Vuong Linh - Principal of Dang Chanh Ky Secondary School (Nam Dan), said: "To build a spacious and modern school, the school's budget will not be enough. However, we determined that we should not rely too much on parents. Even with the socialization plan, we believe that parents should pay as much as they can. For the rest, the school will save money or mobilize and call for support from other sources. We should not let the situation arise where parents are afraid to pay and pay uncomfortably and then their opinions hurt the school."
With a rather specific area, Ms. Hoang Phuong Thao - Head of the Department of Education and Training of Vinh City said: "If socialization is done promptly and correctly, students will soon be able to enjoy it. Therefore, if any school does not dare to do it and does not take responsibility, it will not complete its task. However, with the responsibility of the department, it must also be considered when implementing and approving the plan. Currently, the city has software and requires schools to code assets so that they can update the data of the schools when approving. In addition, we also promptly correct any incorrect information, avoiding the situation where some principals do it carelessly, take advantage of or profit from revenue and expenditure. At the beginning of this school year, the principal of an elementary school was warned for campaigning to install air conditioners for classes against regulations."
Mr. Thai Van Thanh - Director of the Department of Education and Training, added: "Since the beginning of the school year, there have been some units with unreasonable implementation methods, not following the correct procedures and regulations according to the instructions. In these cases, the Department has directly reminded and corrected. At the same time, it is noted that when implementing in the coming time, schools need to have appropriate revenue and expenditure plans, following the correct procedures, ensuring the right purpose. In the process of approving the socialization plans of schools, the Department and departments also calculate, review, and consider based on the actual situation of the school and the conditions of parents and students, avoiding overcharging in the education sector".