These are the outstanding new points of the draft Circular amending and supplementing Circular No. 29/2024/TT-BGDDT that is being publicly consulted by the Ministry of Education and Training.
Teachers are prohibited from taking advantage of relatives to register for tutoring business
According to the draft, teachers currently teaching at schools when participating in extra classes outside the school are responsible for reporting to the principal on subjects, locations, forms of extra classes, relationships with the business registration entity of the extra classes facility, time to participate in extra classes before starting and updating promptly when there are changes to the reported contents.
The reporting is carried out to serve the work of monitoring, managing, and preventing conflicts of interest; not causing administrative procedures, not replacing business licenses, and not being understood as a condition for allowing or not allowing teachers to participate in extra classes outside the school.
The determination of the responsibility of teachers in extracurricular activities outside the school is based on the actual behavior of teachers in directly or indirectly participating in organizing, managing, operating or teaching; it does not depend on whether teachers directly or indirectly register for business activities of extracurricular activities outside the school through individuals or other organizations.
In case the tutoring facility is registered for business by relatives of teachers currently teaching at schools, teachers participating in tutoring must fully fulfill the obligation to report, publicize and explain according to regulations; they are not allowed to directly or indirectly participate in operating and controlling tutoring organization activities that cause conflicts of interest or affect the educational environment.
Principals have the right to increase extra teaching time in schools
The Ministry expects the maximum tutoring time in schools to remain 2 periods/week/subject. However, the Director of the Department of Education and Training may increase the time for "special cases", based on the principal's request. Details were not clearly stated by the Ministry.
Another adjustment is that the commune-level People's Committee will manage, guide and inspect tutoring and extra classes activities in the area, handle or propose to competent authorities to handle violations. Authorities need to publicize hotline numbers to receive and handle recommendations and feedback on tutoring and extra classes.
Circular No. 29/2024/TT-BGDDT, effective from February 2025, stipulates that primary school students are prohibited from tutoring.
Schools (lower secondary schools, high schools) are only allowed to tutor three groups of subjects and must be free, including: Students with unsatisfactory results; Students selected to train excellent students; Final year students, voluntarily registering for exam preparation.
Students who want to take extra classes at school need to register, each class does not exceed 45 students. For each subject, the school is not allowed to teach extra classes for more than two periods a week. Funding is paid by the budget.
For extra classes outside of school, individuals and organizations must register for business, publicize information about tuition fees, duration... Teachers are not allowed to collect extra classes fees from students in their classes.
After Circular 29 took effect, many schools stopped tutoring because they did not have a budget to pay teachers. In many places, it is recorded that the number of extra classes outside the school has "increased a lot", and tuition fees are also higher than before.
