Slightly over 25% of the parents who took part in a study make informal payments to general education institutions of their own free will. Almost 12% said informal taxes were asked by teachers and a similar percentage said the payments were asked by parents committee. The sociological study was conducted by the Institute for Public Policy in partnership with the Center for Sociological Investigations and Marketing „CBS-AXA” and was presented in a news conference at IPN.
“It is interesting that in most of the cases the parents committee collects money, but 25% pay of their own free will and this is more serious. No one forces them to pay and this means that in our society people think they can buy what they need. This is regrettable. It is one of the reasons why very good documents, such as the Education Code and the Code of Ethics, were approved and distributed to all the education institutions by order and ethics councils were created, but these do not work because they go against such a system of values and behaviors that exists among the parents,” said expert in educational policies Anatol Gremalski, one of the authors of the study.
As to the reasons that make the parents make informal payments, 34% said “everyone pays and we also pay”. 28% of the parents consider the payments they make improve the conditions in school. 27% said this way they can take an active part in the school life of the child. “They didn’t say to read a book to the child or to give them a piece of advice as to how to choose the optional courses or to go with them to a contest. They simply pay and take thus an active part in the school life. This is a flaw of our society that we should combat and root out,” stated Anatol Gremalski.
Half of the parents said the informal payments in schools represent a financial burden for their families. The other half said such payments are acceptable for them and some of the parents are ready to pay event more. “From the viewpoint of the child’s right, the fact that the payments for 50% of the families ae a burden is a reason for profound concern. If we correlate this with the registration tax levied by some of the institutions, we can formulate the question: Are there in our society social ‘elevators’ that enable a child that comes from a family with modest incomes to have access to high-quality education?” said the expert.
The study authors noted a part of the parents are oriented not to education values, but to values of the education process and this is regrettable. The parents whose children have high grades are satisfied the most.
The research also shows the general costs of families and the costs for education are higher in the case of families from urban areas and of Russian speaking families. In his regard, CBS-AXA director Ion Jigău gave an example from studies carried out by American sociologists at the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s. These studied three generations – who was the grandfather, the father and the child in three large communities: Hispanics/Afro-Americans; Italians and Jews. The results showed that in the case of Hispanics and Afro-Americans, the child followed in the footsteps of the grandfather and father. If the grandfather and father were sweepers in New-York, the child will most probably be a sweeper too. But the grandchild of a Jewish man who was a shoemaker can become a university teacher or company manager.
“So, this is the attitude to children’s studies. An Afro-American, a Hispanic and an Italian say: the child and grandchild will be like me and this is ok. A Jewish man will tell the child: you must be better than me and be two-three steps higher than me. And it usually happened so,” noted Ion Jigău, saying Moldovan society in this case is closer to the Italians.
The study “Academic ethics and integrity in general education. Informal payments in schools” was carried out with financial support from the Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations through Soros Foundation Moldova. The study results are representative nationwide with a margin of sampling error of ±4% and are comparable with similar studies conducted in 2006 and 2012.
