VietNamNet Bridge – Though having prepared ideologically for paying big sums of money at the beginning of the new academic year, a lot of parents still have got shocked by the sky high fees set by schools.

“H”, a parent whose son is entering the first grade of the Vietnam-Australia Primary School in Hanoi, said that she had to pay 100 million dong in total at the beginning of the academic year.

The sum of money includes the pay for tuition (61,950,000 dong per academic year), for the school development fund (7,227,500 dong) and for meals, school uniforms…

H said that the tuition and school fees this year are all higher than that of the previous year. She had to pay 55 million dong only in tuition last year and 5.5 million dong for the school development fund. All the required contribution items have been informed on the school’s official website and parents had time to arrange their money.

Meanwhile, the parents whose children go to the Doan Thi Diem Primary School were exceedingly astonished when hearing about the sums of money they have to pay for the children this year. “LA”, a parent, said that she has to pay 5 million dong a month in tuition. However, the problem is that the school asks parents to pay tuitions once for three months.

As such, LA has to pay 20 million dong at once at the beginning of the school year. “Last week, when I went to the parents’ meeting, I brought with myself 10 million dong and believed that it was more than enough for the tuitions and school fees. But finally, I had to borrow 10 million dong from a friend,” LA said.

The Brendon Primary School also asks parents to pay tuitions twice a year. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the academic year, every student has to pay 25 million dong at once for the first semester’s tuition (18 million dong), meals (5 million dong) and school building fee (2 million dong per school year). Besides, there are a lot of kinds of expenses such as the ones for uniform, excursion fee and textbooks.

The same thing that all parents complain is that the tuition and school fees have increased dramatically. The Doan Thi Diem Primary School, for example, has announced the 20 percent increase in tuitions in comparison with 2010.

The Le Quy Don Primary School has set up the new tuition level at 2.2 million dong per month. Besides, parents also have to pay 1 million dong more for boarding day students and the pay the money for the school development fund (2 million dong), the study encouragement fund…

A parent of a Ngoc Lam Primary School’s students in Gia Lam district, said that right before the opening of the new academic year, she received a call from the teacher who informed that every student would have to pay 1 million dong to purchase an overhead projector that serves the teaching.

Second graders of the schools have also been informed that the school will invite foreign teachers to teach English to the students, which means that every second grader will have to pay an additional sum of 600,000 dong a month.

Ha Anh Toan, Headmaster of the Trung Phung Primary School in Dong Da district in Hanoi, said that it is a good policy to call for the financial contribution from parents to develop education, because the state budget is not big enough to cover all expenses.

Toan said that though the city’s authorities have allocated a bigger budget for the Trung Phung School, but he is sure that the budget is not sufficient to run the school.

With 208 students, the school would be allocated the budget of some 600 million dong this year (3 million dong per student). Meanwhile, every month, the school needs 100 million dong just to pay salaries to 30 teachers and workers. This means that the sum of money would not be enough just to pay salaries.

Vinh Thinh – Nguyen Hien