According to the Ministry’s proposal, tuition fee of higher education will surge by 12.5 percent while that in preschools and high schools will increased by 7.5 percent compared to the last school year.

Self-financing public higher education facilities must ensure regular spending and investment spending including purchases such as machinery, land, production inputs, or infrastructure to satisfy assessment.

These self-financing public institutions are entitled to collect tuition fee rating 2.5 times higher than the standard levels set by the government.

The Ministry also suggested management of tuition fee in state educational facilities as well as tuition exemption policies and costs of academic courses.

The Ministry announced that the government’s decree No. 86/2015 on management of tuition fee in state educational facilities, tuition exemption policies and costs of academic courses from the 2015 - 2016 to 2020 - 2021 school year is no longer valid; therefore, there should be a new one to replace the old decree.

According to the Ministry, the tuition fee set as per the decree old No.86 ( of VND300,000 ) is quite low in big cities and there has been tuition framework policies for student tuition and fees for self-financing schools and schools which have regular investment spending.

The present low tuition framework is lower than the cost borne by colleges especially in several majors including healthcare science which require lots of training time and practice.

Ceiling tuition fees regulated by the decree No.86 are just made up 40 percent – 50 percent of training cost paid by educational facilities; as a result, the government has still compensated schools.

Subsequently, the Ministry proposed tuition fee of VND300,000 – VND540,000 a month for a preschooler and a primary student in big cities and VND100,000 monthly for a preschooler and VND100,000 – VND220,000 per month for a primary student in the countrywide; VND 300,000 – VND650,000 for a junior high schooler in large cities while their peers in rural district each pay VND100,000 – VND270,000; a senior high schooler in big cities is proposed to pay VND300,000 – VND650,000 a month and a student in the countryside will pay VND200,000- VND330,000 monthly for the 2021 - 2022 school year .

Students from ethnic minority groups will pay less than. For instance, students of preschools and primary school each pay VND110,000 a month; junior and senior high schools each pay VND50,00 – VND170,000 a month and VND100,000 – VND220,000 a month respectively.

Additionally, the government has just given VND100,000 monthly as a support to disadvantaged students. The amount is so low compare to the present consumption level. Local administrations proposed to maintain the tuition exemption policies for the next academic school year.

A balanced tuition framework is composed of both student contributions and government spending with regard to each localities’ economic conditions, residents’ real contributions, consumer price index increase, annual economic growth to ensure that tuition fee can cover teachers’ salaries, direct expenditure, management spending and other spends.

The Ministry explained hike of tuition fee for preschools and high schools is based on the scenarios of the country’s economic growth depicted by the General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam.

It is expected that the new tuition fee proposed by the Ministry will compensate half of training expenditure by the 2025 – 2026 academic year and cover all as of 2030. SGGP

Phan Thao-Anh Quan