VietNamNet Bridge – ASEAN Junior College has taken legal proceedings against the Ministry of Education and Training MOET and the ministry’s inspectors after it was imposed the fine of hundreds of millions of dong and forced to stop enrolling students in 2013.

MOET’s Chief Inspector Nguyen Huy Bang in May 2013 stated that ASEAN Junior College violated the Decision No. 42 issued in 2012 on the organization of joint training programs, because it organized the training courses without the licensing by the competent agencies.

The school has also been found as violating the Decision No. 06 stipulating the regulations on training students at the junior college and university levels, when organizing full-time training courses outside the school.

The junior college made public about the joint training programs, enrolled students and provided training courses to the students, who finished intermediate schools (2-year training) and passed credits to study at the junior college to obtain full-time training degrees.

The training courses were organized in cooperation with the Van Tuong Intermediate School in HCM City and Viet Anh School in Nghe An. 703 students were enrolled for the courses.

Bang noted that the school deliberately conducted the behavior of breaking the laws many times. When the wrongdoings were discovered, the school made dishonest reporting about the problems, despite the warnings about the punishment given by the watchdog agency. This shows the school’s leaders’ attitude of defying the laws.

In the latest news, Tran Kim Phuong, Chair of the Management Board of ASEAN Junior School has brought the case to the Hanoi People’s Court, believing that MOET’s inspectors have made a wrong decision when imposing the punishments.

Phuong said that the inspectors miscalculated the number of the permanent lecturers of the school, since they adopted the regulations on state owned schools for her school – a private one.

Phuong went on to say that ASEAN provides multidisciplinary training, with only two out of the six training majors (pharmacy and nurse) having relations with medical training.

However, the education inspectors still decided that the number of medical majoring students was the majority. This has put a disadvantage for the school when calculating the ratios of students on lecturers.

Under the current regulations, at medical intermediate schools, there must be at least one lecturer for every 25 students. The ratio is one lecturer for 20 students for junior colleges. Meanwhile, the ratio applied to non-medical schools is one lecturer for every 30 students.

ASEAN Junior College has also claimed for damage, saying that the decision by the education inspectors to stop the school’s enrolment has caused big losses to the school.

Bang from MOET on August 13 told VietNamNet that the inspectors have been following necessary procedures as required by the laws.

Bang has rejected the understanding of ASEAN School about the current laws about the required number of permanent lecturers.

The Circular No. 57 stipulates that the teachers and lecturers of non-state owned schools are understood as the ones who work for schools under long term labor contracts and work full time at the training establishment.

Meanwhile, ASEAN School argues that when there are students, there will be lecturers. This means that the school would invite teachers after it enrolls students. The teachers must be considered as visiting lecturers, not permanent ones.

Van Chung