Prices of textbooks increase making parents more worried
The Deputy Minister added that the price of new textbooks has increased higher than the old ones, the reason is because of the number of copies and the mechanism for price formation.
Currently, following the government’s policies of social contribution to the education sector, publishers spend their money compiling and printing textbooks resulting in higher costs.
While the Law on Prices has not been amended, the Ministry of Education and Training has coordinated with the Ministry of Finance to closely monitor the prices of businesses for this special goods item. After publishers have declared the price of each set of books, ministries monitored to decrease them from 5 percent to 15 percent.
The Ministry of Education and Training has also issued a document directing specialized units to research and develop technical standards for textbooks.
Regarding tuition fees, Deputy Minister Pham Ngoc Thuong said that according to Decree 81/2021, the Government shall set a different framework of tuition fees for each locality, and the unit shall decide the specific tuition fee level in each academic year to ensure the quality of training within the ceiling of tuition fees prescribed by the Government.
Starting from September of the academic year 2022-2023, there will be an increase in tuition fees according to regulations. As per this roadmap, tuition fees in public preschools will increase by about 75 percent while that of universities by about 12.5 percent.
According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, the adjusted price of education services will increase the national average consumer price index in 2022 by about 0.55 percent-1.05 percent, and the tuition fee for the 2022-2023 school year is expected to increase CPI by 1.5 percent - 2.8 percent.
To implement the Resolution of the Government meeting in May, the Government has assigned the Ministry of Education and Training to review and evaluate the impact of increasing prices of educational services and textbooks and send its report to the Government in the next month.
Currently, the prices of textbooks are managed according to the provisions of the Law on Education and the Law on Prices. Accordingly, textbook prices are on the list of goods for which price declaration is made, and not on the list of goods subsidized by the government.
In the academic year 2022-2023, the Ministry of Finance cooperates with the Ministry of Education and Training to monitor publishers’ declaration of textbook prices; subsequently, the two ministries have requested publishers to implement cost-saving measures with the aim to continue controlling inflation as well as to ensure social security and share with parents’ financial burden.
Currently, the Ministry of Finance is carrying out an opinion poll on the amended Law on Prices, which has included textbooks in the list of goods that are priced by the State.
The Ministry of Education and Training was assigned to stipulate the price of textbooks in association with technical and professional requirements to have reasonable prices and meet professional requirements in education and training.
