According to Nguyen Thi Thuy, Head of the Culture and Society Committee of the Hanoi People’s Council, under the new resolution of the council, released on July 11, the tuitions the students of the schools in the former Ha Tay, Hoa Binh, Vinh Phuc and Hanoi (now the parts of the expanded Hanoi) would be either lower or unchanged at 20,000 dong a month in rural areas and 40,000 dong a month in urban areas.

Meanwhile, students in Me Linh district would have to pay 20,000 dong instead of the previous rate of 7000 dong a month. However, the tuition increase is inconsiderable, and according to the people’s council, comes in line with the regulations in the Decree 49 which says that the tuitions and school fees must not be higher than five percent of the average income of households in the localities.

According to Ngo Thi Doan Thanh, Chair of the Hanoi People’s Council, if referring to the regulation that the tuitions and school fees must not be higher than 5 percent of households’ income, the tuitions should be 300,000 dong a month for students in urban areas and 177,000 dong a month for students in rural areas.

However, she said that in order to create most favorable conditions for students, the city’s authorities decided to allocate bigger budget for education.

When asked how the tuition decreases would affect the city’s budget collection, Thanh has affirmed that the decrease in the state budget collection would be compensated to ensure that all the schools can operate in a normal track.

Thuy has affirmed that the budget allocated to the schools is enough for normal operation. The schools which practice thriftiness would have enough money to spend on the basic needs.

A recent survey conducted by the city’s authorities showed that the conditions of schools in the city are quite different.

The material facilities prove to be better at some schools, where students can learn in the classrooms with air conditioners both in summer and winter. Meanwhile, other schools do not have money to buy air conditioners and cannot afford the high electricity bills.

Especially, the monthly incomes of general school teachers are also different. Besides the fixed salaries from the state budget, they can also enjoy additional income monthly.

State owned schools would get overloaded?

Tran Thi Van Hoa, a member of the Hanoi People’s Council, has warned that once the tuitions decrease, students would rush to state owned schools, thus leading to the overloading at the schools.

She emphasized that tuition is not the biggest concern of parents, while they are more interested in the additional fees and the education quality.

Some analysts have also warned that lowering the tuitions does not mean that the students would be able to pay less money for their study. It may happen that more unofficial school fees would be imposed on students and parents.

Students of people founded schools keep complaining about the sky high tuitions set up by the schools. Therefore, some experts have suggested setting up a ceiling tuition level for non-state owned schools.

However, in fact, it’s very difficult to set up a ceiling for the schools, because the schools operate under the Enterprise Law and they only open schools if they can make profits. The tuitions of the schools have been negotiable between the school runners and parents.