This makes parent meetings less stressful and burdensome, making parents unhappy when attending the meetings. This can be considered a good sign for parent meetings today. This is thanks to the boldness of parents themselves, the strong direction of education leaders, and the timely reflection of public opinion and the press.
Students prepare for the mid-year parent-teacher conference that just took place.
Photo: Tran Nhan Trung
Don't bring up money at parent-teacher conferences.
That was the instruction before the recent parent meeting of a high school principal in Tan Phu district, Ho Chi Minh City. This principal carefully reminded the homeroom teachers: "Teachers do not remind students to pay tuition fees so that parents can feel secure about celebrating Tet. Teachers absolutely must not let the parent representative committee call on parents in the class to pay money for gifts, lucky money for teachers... The school also does not have a policy of collecting this association fund or that association fund. If parents have the heart and conditions, they can directly support scholarships for disadvantaged students in the school". Even on the occasion of November 20 every year, the leader of the above high school always instructed: "The school does not prohibit personal feelings between parents and teachers, because that is the spirit of respecting teachers. But the school strictly prohibits homeroom teachers from receiving money from the representative committee (collecting money from each parent) and then giving it to this teacher or that teacher...".
With that direction, according to many teachers in the school, parent-teacher meetings always take place smoothly, comfortably, and achieve high consensus.
Although the contribution is not heavy, it does not mean that the role of parents, the connection and concern of parents with the school have lost its effect. On the contrary, with the spirit of voluntary help, the effect is more promoted. The school only needs to state the specific circumstances of how many difficult students need help, and parents are willing to join hands.
It is normal for parents to help many disadvantaged students in the class with amounts sometimes up to tens of millions of VND. After the recent parent-teacher meeting of the school, in which the principal requested not to discuss revenue and expenditure, a parent went directly to the school's finance office to pay all the first semester fees for a disadvantaged student in the class, amounting to 4.5 million VND.
Reality shows great effectiveness when schools and teachers do not heavily contribute and collect expenses during parent-teacher meetings.
I hope the situation of "the superiors say but the subordinates don't listen" will end.
However, not all schools have a drastic, clear, and gentle approach like the above mentioned high school. In fact, many school representatives are very "strong-mouthed" and "strong-handed" in collecting and spending. It is worth mentioning that although the collection is voluntary, parents are in a position where they "cannot not pay".
Many schools collect money continuously at each parent meeting, the amount of declared income and expenditure is up to thirty or forty million VND. A parent of a middle school in Tan Binh district, Ho Chi Minh City, was upset: "There have only been two meetings, at the beginning and middle of the year, but each parent of my child's class has had to pay the class representative committee 1.3 million VND. I don't know how much more we have to pay from now until the end of the year." "From the beginning of the school year, we parents were secretly happy because the city's education leaders directed that there should be no more funds in the school. But I don't understand why the parents' association at my child's school still collects 'heavily' like that. Hopefully, the situation of 'the superiors say but the subordinates don't listen' will end," said the above parent.
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