May-02-2008
By Ngoc Minh
ThanhNien News.com

Given the recent noise the government has made about cutting Vietnam’s school dropout rate, the state-run textbook publishing monopoly’s plan to increase textbook prices is hypocrisy of the highest degree.
This is not even to mention how such a move runs contrary to the country’s official line on cutting inflation.

While the government has asked schools not to increase fees, allowing our textbooks – which many experts agree are of poor quality – to become more expensive is the kind of policy contradiction that could sink our burgeoning economy.

The hike of 10 percent on the retail price of textbooks may seem insignificant to some well-off urban families, but for parents in rural and remote areas who have been hit hard by soaring market prices over the past half-year, it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Making essential school materials such as textbooks more expensive will neutralize many efforts that have been made to curb the alarmingly high dropout rate.

About 120,000 students quit school in the first semester of the 2007-08 school year alone.

How many more maynever go to school in 2008-09 because the books are too expensive?

Obviously, the Ministry of Education and Training’s textbook monopoly – Education Publishing House – will now earn bigger profits than ever before off the hundreds-of-millions of textbooks it sells every year.

While disgruntled parents have repeatedly complained over the poor quality of textbooks, they have no choice but to buy them.

Based on its own inspectors’ report in May last year, the government had ordered the ministry and the publisher to consider cutting textbook prices and improving content.

But authorities later allowed the publisher to postpone the revamp until the 2008-09 school year.

With this latest move to hike prices, the monopoly has set a terrible precedent by disobeying the government’s orders and making things more difficult for poor families who won’t be able to afford the costs of sending their kids to school.

There’s been a lot of talk about Vietnam becoming “the next Asian tiger” as our economy continues to boom, but how will we justify this reputation to the families for whom our nation cannot even provide a simple education?