At the 38th session, the National Assembly Standing Committee gave opinions on the draft Law on Teachers.
The draft law has attracted attention when proposing policies to support teachers, including subsidies based on the nature of work and region; policies to support training and development; periodic health care, occupational health care; tuition exemption for biological children and legally adopted children of teachers while working...
To implement the tuition-free policy for children of teachers and lecturers, about 9,200 billion VND/year is needed.
There are two different opinions surrounding this humane policy: support and opposition. So the question is why do many opinions disagree with exempting tuition fees for teachers' children from kindergarten to university?
Lao Dong Newspaper sends readers the opinion of Mr. Nguyen Van Luc - former teacher of Trinh Phong Secondary School, Khanh Hoa about this proposal:
In principle, the Law must be universal and unified to ensure the rights and legitimate interests of all citizens. In other words, all citizens have the same rights and obligations before the law (including students), not serving the private interests of any individual or political or social organization.
The proposal to add the clause "Exemption of tuition fees for biological and legally adopted children of teachers during their working term" to the Law on Teachers is no different from only benefiting teachers' children, and is unfair to children of other professions.
Although we know that this is a humane policy, showing concern for teachers, education, education is the top national policy, it is completely understandable. However, this unintentionally creates "privileges and benefits" for teachers' children, which is not right, society does not agree, even I myself and many teachers are not happy to enjoy this "privilege" policy.
The policy of exempting tuition fees for teachers’ children from kindergarten to university can also lead to comparison, discrimination, and unfairness among students in exercising their rights and obligations to study. For this reason, the Ministry of Education and Training needs to study the impact of the Law and Policy before the National Assembly delegates “press the button” to pass it.
As a teacher, with 37 years of experience working in the education sector, I personally agree with the need for a Teachers Law. The Teachers Law has recognized the rights of teachers such as: “Improving salaries and welfare policies; Teachers’ salaries should be ranked highest compared to the administrative and career salary scale system because it must ensure the lives of teachers; Teachers’ seniority should not be cut…”; In line with the Party and State’s policy of “Education is the top national policy”.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training, in the 2023-2024 school year, the country currently has about 1.6 million teachers. When the Law on Teachers is promulgated, there will be many benefits and incentives for about 1.6 million teachers as mentioned above.
I think that, in addition to enjoying the benefits as in the draft Law on Teachers, each teacher must be aware of the responsibility in training their expertise and professional ethics instead of relying on special privileges such as the above-mentioned tuition exemption policy.
