At the conference evaluating efficiency in cooperation between the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Training & Education in 2017, with an aim to finalize the Education Law on December, representatives said there should be no charge for children in public kindergartens. Deputy Director of Planning & Economy Department of the Ministry of Training & Education Ngo Van Thinh said, at present, students do not have to pay for tuition free in elementary school, while there are still tuition fees for kindergartens and secondary schools, in addition to policies of reduced tuition fee for poor students.
However, policies for tuition fees are having some shortcomings. Specifically, Law on amending and supplementing a number of articles of the education law, article 2 of clause 11 regulates that preschool education for five-yea-old children, primary education and lower secondary education shall be made universal. However, as of present, only students at primary education get free of tuition fee, while students in other academic level still have to pay tuition fee. This has caused difficulties to encourage students to go to school, especially students in high lands and under poverty. At present, parents of students in rural areas or high lands are of low income level, thus, paying tuition fee regardless how low it is still a challenge for them.
In the process of considering a tuition-free secondary schools, the Ministry of Training & Education has conducted study at 18 countries in 4 continents, ranging from low income, middle income and high income countries. In which, 4 out of 18 countries have tuition free for all academic levels. 6 out of 18 countries have tuition free for kindergartens. All 18 countries have tuition free for preliminary schools. 11 out of 18 countries have tuition free for secondary schools, and 8 out of 18 countries have tuition free for high schools. As such, the study showed that 33% the number of countries have tuition free for kindergartens, 61% have tuition free for secondary schools and 44% for high schools.
With regard to the tuition free proposal, Vice Director of Ha Nam Training & Education Nguyen Quang Long said, student’s families are expecting this policy for a long time. If this policy gets approved, it should be expanded to children in kindergartens. “If not all children in kindergartens get tuition free, then at least it should be applied to 5 year old children, and we are going for universalizing access to kindergarten education for children under 4 years of age, as such, we are hoping to expand the beneficiaries under this policy. This has also been implemented in many countries in the world” – Long said.
Many representatives are in favor of tuition free for secondary schools, and with option to expand to kindergartens. Besides, it is said that in many major cities, large population causes difficulties for public schools meeting demands in term of infrastructure, equipment and conditions for students to study.
