ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
2. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE FINANCIAL AUTONOMY SITUATION AT NON-BUSINESS EDUCATION UNITS IN BAC KAN PROVINCE
2.1. The status of classification of non-business education unit types at the provincial level in Bac Kan province In each period of autonomy, the management agencies at all levels of Bac Kan province have issued decisions to assign autonomy to each unit. However, having the characteristics of a mountainous province, the average rate of expenditure on education and training has remained low, thus, the implementation of the autonomy mechanism in non-business education units has
been facing many difficulties. There is not any unit that can cover all recurrent expenditures by themselves in the whole province of Bac Kan. Only a small percentage of units cover a part of recurrent expenditure, whereas most are guaranteed by the state budget.
2.2. Situation of autonomy in revenue sources at provincial-level non-business education units in Bac Kan province.
Figure: Revenue structure of Bac Kan provincial-level non-business education units
Source: Synthesized from data of units The figure clearly shows the source of revenue of the state budget revenue units depends entirely on the state budget. The graph shows that the revenue from the state budget dominates the total revenue both in terms of evolution and shape. On average, during the whole period, state budget funding accounted for about 89.7% of the total revenue of non-business education units.
This is understandable because of the sparse population density, very low average income while the education sector in the province has been making great efforts to implement the sector’s activities. With a small number of students, mainly ethnic minority students receiving subsidies from the state budget, it is difficult to expand and develop educational service activities without using the state budget. Therefore, the main source of funding for the provincial-level education units is from the state budget.
2.3. Expenditure autonomy at provincial non-business education units in Bac Kan province
The units have proactively arranged and arranged reasonable labor, implemented democratic publicity in management and financial expenditures, saving regular operating expenses. However, since most of the non-business education units are funded by the state budget, their regular operating expenses are mainly salaries (accounting for about 60 - 70% of total recurrent expenditure), and there are no conditions to develop professional activities (because other expenses are small).
34 THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON: “FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING FOR THE PROMOTION OF SUSTAINABLE...
Figure: Structure of expenditures at non-business education units
(Source: Synthesized from data of units) 2.4. The status of autonomy in the distribution of results at provincial-level non-business education units in Bac
Kan province
Most of non-business education units are financed by the state budget with low revenues (mostly less than 10 %) and a great number of state-subsidized students, thus their savings is not large and the extra income of employees is not high. Details of the savings and extra income at non-business education units are shown in the figure below:
Figure: The difference between regular income and expenditure and the payment of extra income at non-business education units in Bac Kan Province
(Source: Synthesized from the data of the units)
Besides, there are units who have no savings. There is a big difference between units with the highest and the lowest extra income.
2.5. The actual situation of developing and implementing internal spending regulations at provincial-level 100% of non-business education units in Bac Kan province develop internal spending regulations on the principle of democracy, consented by leaders, trade unions and cadres and officials through the meeting of officials and employees. The units also strengthen the management and supervision (especially the practice of thrift and anti-waste) to ensure the good implementation of the regulations established in the internal spending regulations and consistent with the operating characteristics of each unit.
2.6. Evaluation of the actual situation of implementing the financial autonomy mechanism at the provincial non-business education units in Bac Kan province
* Achievements
It can be seen that the implementation of the autonomy mechanism in the field of education and training in the past time has recently gained some achievements as follows:
- Most of the non-business units of education and training sector in Bac Kan province are funded by the state budget. They are assigned with estimates from the beginning of the year therefore, they are proactive in making spending plan for the year, meeting the requirements of professional tasks performance, without any difficulties due to the lack of timely funding. In addition, the funds to pay for policy-supported students according to regulations have been fully provided.
- Units have focused on cost and expense management, initially implemented cost classification to better control costs.
- Units have proactively arranged reasonable and scientific labor to save costs and implement the policy of downsizing the staff.
- The development of internal spending regulations at the units has basically generalized all revenue sources and expenditure contents.
* Difficulties, limitations and causes
- In the regulations on revenue, there are only regulations on tuition fees and several other tyoes of fees, Bac Kan province has not yet issued regulations on other revenues. This makes it difficult for some schools to organize service activities outside of regular class time for students such as: tutoring, extra tutoring after hours, day-boarding activities, etc.
- The current regulations of budget allocation for recurrent expenditure on education makes the spending norm for professional and other activities of the schools very low, not to mention that the units still have to try harder to have 10% savings in operating expenses.
- Some units can not pay additional income for employees because they have no savings, nor the source to set aside funds such as: fund for development of non-business activities, bonus and welfare fund or standby fund to stabilize income.
36 THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON: “FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING FOR THE PROMOTION OF SUSTAINABLE...
- The facilities at the schools only meet about 54% of the actual needs, especially with the new curriculum, it is necessary to design separate rooms to study subjects. Especially, there is a considerable lack of teaching and learning equipment which has no budget to be allocated for.
The current national target program only allows repair, rather than new construction, but with the current physical condition, it cannot be repaired on the base of thatched cottages.
- Although the units have implemented the classification of expenditures according to regulations, most of the units have not differentiated between the two concepts of expenditure and cost, leading to some limitations in accounting work such as: uncalculated depreciation and inseparated other expenses. Therefore, the units have not been able to calculate the cost of services provided by their units.
- With the characteristics of a difficult mountainous province, it is very difficult to develop public services without using the state budget in the field of education and training in Bac Kan. For public services using the state budget, it is not possible to establish technical and economic norms of these services, and there is no basis to determine the price of education and training services in the province.
- Currently, Bac Kan Provincial People’s Committee has not issued a list of public non-business services using and not using state budget funds for the field of education and training in the area. The latest document on this issue is the Official Dispatch No. 1818/SGD&DT-KHTC dated August 19th, 2021 of the Department of Education and Training explaining the draft proposal to promulgate a list of public services using the state budget in the fields of Education &
Training. This is a significant obstacle in the process of organizing professional activities of public educational non-business units. Accordingly, it directly affects the revenue of a number of units that have the conditions and ability to perform public non-business service activities without using state budget funds.
3. SOME SOLUTIONS TO ENHANCE FINANCIAL AUTONOMY IN NON-BUSINESS EDUCATION UNITS IN BAC KAN