VietNamNet Bridge – State officials and educators have pointed out that it is impossible to prohibit teachers from giving private lessons, because the demand and supply both have been existing in the society, and that it would be better to control, and not prohibit tutoring.

 
The proposal to prohibit tutoring has been made after many parents complained that their children have been forced to go to extra classes, or their children will be persecuted by the teachers. Local education departments have ordered schools to not allow their teachers to give private tuitions without the agreement of student’s parents.

 

However, many state officials and educators have pointed out that it is impossible to prohibit tutoring. Teachers need to organize extra classes because they need to take extra work to earn more money, when the official wage paid by the state cannot feed their families. Meanwhile, many students have the demand for attending extra classes in order to improve their learning capability.

 

Tran Thi Kim Thanh, Deputy Director of the HCM City Education and Training Department, said at the working session with the supervisors from the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children; several days ago, that “people now generally agree with the tutoring, and that the city’s authorities have been well controlling the tutoring. The local education department regularly takes unexpected inspection tours to extra classes. If teachers open extra classes at their homes, they must report to their school headmasters about the numbers of students, learning conditions and the tuition fees.”

 

A member of the supervision team said that it is impossible to prohibit teachers from giving private lessons, because teachers cannot live on their official salaries they receive from the state budget. However, he expressed worry that problems would arise in the relation between teachers and students, once money appears in the relation. It may happen that teachers ask students to do very difficult exercises, and if students cannot solve the problems, they will have to go to extra classes.

 

“Previously, private lessons were only given to bad students. Nowadays, even excellent students are also asked to go to extra classes,” he said.

 

In fact, parents have every reason to worry about the tutoring in massive scale. A lot of parents complain they do not have money to pay for extra class fees. Students have been burdened with too many lessons. They have to go to school both in the morning and afternoon, and they still have to go to extra classes in the evening. Psychologists have warned that all work and no play will badly affect children.

 

Teacher’s incomes too low

 

According to the HCM City Finance Department, the average income of a teacher in HCM City, which includes official salary and allowances, is 3.8-4.5 million dong a month.

 

Hua Ngoc Thuan, Deputy Chair of HCM City People’s Committee said “all teachers complain that their income is not high enough to cover their living, especially newly graduated teachers.” It is clear that with the current income levels, teachers find it hard to live in HCM City, where everything is getting more expensive, even though the city’s authorities have been trying to increase the pay to teachers.

 

“We should think of raising teacher’s salaries to the levels which are high enough for teachers to reproduce the labor power. One working teacher needs to feed one person,” he said.

 

Currently, besides the salaries paid from the state budget, HCM City is giving allowances to teachers in remote areas (600,000 dong per person) and to teachers of nursery schools (300,000 dong per person per month).

 

According to the HCM City Education and Training Department, there are 63,976 teachers.

 

C. V