Schooled in extortion

As another new semester begins, 12-year-old Jia Jun has been hesitant to tell his mother that he needs 200 yuan ($32) to buy watercolor paints and paintbrushes offered by his school.

"My teacher said that anyone who does not buy them will not be allowed to attend painting class," Jia told the Global Times, adding that when he finally told his mother she became irritated, as he had expected.

It was not first time students in Jia's school, a primary school for the children of migrant workers located in Hengyang, Hunan Province, were required to buy things including stationery, uniforms, reference books, extra training courses or breakfast, which either they did not need or already had.

Jia's mother, Song Ming, a 37-year-old housewife, was reluctant to pay, not because that she did not want her child to learn to paint - a required course - but for other reasons.

"I felt the school was forcing students and parents to buy things and leaving them no choice," Song told the Global Times.

Nearly 500 million yuan was illegally charged by schools in 2011, according to the Ministry of Education (MOE) website. Despite the continuing efforts by the MOE and provincial education departments to crack down on schools gaining profit from their role as sales agents, as well as attempts to emphasize that schools cannot force students to consume, schools - particularly disadvantaged ones - still find ways to profit from students.

Driven by profit or desperation?

In Macheng, Hubei Province, students at the Huangjinqiao Middle School are required to pay 230 yuan in subscription fees for seven different magazines and newspapers every year, regardless of whether they read them or not, the Wuhan-based Wuhan Evening News reported.

Zeng Zhen, a retired teacher who used to be a vice-director of the academic affairs' office of the school, told the Global Times that during his 20 years of teaching, students also had to buy reference books from the school. "Some of those books, such as those about patriotic education and harmful drugs are required reading set by the local education bureau, which sets a sales quota for each school. If there aren't enough students buying it, teaching staff have to find a way to sell them anyway, or their bonus will be reduced," Zeng said.

Concerns go beyond costs. Shanghai school uniforms were in the press recently, after toxic dye was found in the uniforms for 21 schools that had been produced by the Shanghai Ouxia garment company, located in a village of suburban Shanghai adjacent to a garbage dump.

Liao Tianjun, a student from the privately-owned Yuxin Senior High School, one of the 21 schools, told the Global Times that they had had to buy two sets of uniforms every one or two years, which cost 200 yuan each, while an anonymous source close to the company told the Global Times that the cost was around 80 yuan and the price for schools was not much higher than that, meaning a significant profit margin for schools. The source said that the manager's husband had previously been an official with the local education bureau, but this claim was denied by a spokesperson at the bureau on Friday.

The MOE has regulated that schools cannot charge any agency fees for buying things for students.

"But that is very hard in practice," Zeng said, adding that schools are often presented with extra books (often for teachers' use) or coupons from the factory and receive red packages with "money of thanks."

Zeng said he'd seen these kinds of things at schools before, but they were never severely punished.

"Because the money was used for new buildings and given to teachers as part of their salaries, the bureau officials tacitly consent to it as they can spend more money on better schools."

Zeng recalled that in 2010, most of the teachers could only receive 1,090 yuan for their monthly salary, not including bonuses, and young teachers often left after just one year.

"The schools have to figure out ways to get more money to have more advanced facilities and talents, not only to please the education bureau officials when they visit, but also to attract good students and teachers," Zeng added.

An intern teacher surnamed Li from Yancheng Middle School, one of the leading public schools in Jiangsu Province, told the Global Times that there are no extra fees at the school, as the government and local education bureau keep a close eye on the school's operations. "They dare not do so. They have enough funds so they don't have to," Li said.

A problem of distribution

Government expenditure on education rose to 4 percent of the country's GDP last year for the first time since this goal was set in 1993, as the Global Times reported earlier, but many experts still think 4 percent is much lower than the average of 5.1 percent in many developed countries and the global average of 4.9 percent.

Chu Chaohui, a researcher with the National Institute of Educational Sciences, told the Global Times that despite inadequate funds for rural education, local education authorities spend most of their budgets on elite schools while neglecting the less privileged.

"Governments should increase spending on rural areas, but also make spending transparent to ensure that the 2-trillion-yuan education fund is spent the way it should be," Xiong Bingqi, an education expert with the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told the Global Times, adding that a committee to monitor education spending is needed. He also said that the problem isn't total spending as much as it is distribution. "Investment should be more fairly distributed and the government should spend more on those rural areas, rather than schools equipped with top-level facilities."

However, Qin Qin, a professor from Beijing Normal University, said that schools should regulate themselves and that as long as parents leave all the education responsibilities with schools, they will find ways to charge extra. "Some parents are willing to donate money for new buildings with multi-media teaching facilities, while some would protest against that. Some parents want the school to take round-the-clock responsibility for young primary-school children," Qin said.

In Guizhou Province, the most serious added costs are optional additional classes. The provincial government has urged leading schools to stop this practice. "But parents did not agree and protested several times at the education bureau of Guizhou," said Lei Zhongyong, a deputy director at the office of basic education at the education department of Guizhou Province.