Hundreds of poor students struggling to pay school fees at a secondary school in Nghe An Province have yet to receive their allowances.

Chau Phong secondary school headmaster, Nguyen Nhu Bao

According to Government policies, a VND70,000 (USD3.35) allowance per month is provided to disadvantaged students to help buy supplies of school stationary during an academic year. The policies took into effect since January 1, 2011.

Chau Phong Secondary School in Quy Chau District’ Chau Phong Comnune is one of targeted localities for such policies.

As many as 110 or 44% of students at the school should benefit from the allowance but they haven’t despite having completed applications for the allowance last year.

A parent said, “Both of my children are studying in this school and I have prepared two applications for the allowance. We haven’t received anything yet. I’ve mentioned this to my children’s teachers, but they couldn’t help”.

According to a media investigation, the school has received allowances worth VND38.5 million (USD1,844) for those students for first five months of the 2010-2011 school year, but instead of allocating the funding to the targeted students, the school has misused the money.

The school’s headmaster Nguyen Nhu Bao, said, “Actually, we’ve received the allowance of nearly VND40 million for 110 students for the first term of the last school year. However, as all of these students come from poor families, we often face difficulties in collecting school fees from them. So, we decided to keep the money and make deductions to some of school fees, including payments for school uniforms, security and school parking-lot”.

However, all the parents said in addition to the tuition fees, they had paid school fees worth VND714,000 (USD34.21) for their children without receiving any deduction from the school.

When Bao was compelled to reveal the minutes of parent meetings during the 2011-2012 school year to reporters, it was clear parents had paid these fees themselves.