Public opinion
Solve the "difficulty of refunding fees" for out-of-school training institutions, is a contract enough?
In order to standardize the service behavior of out-of-school training institutions and promote the settlement of disputes over the collection and refund of out-of-school training, the Ministry of Education and the General Administration of Market Supervision and Administration recently jointly issued the "Out-of-school Training Service Contract for Primary and Middle School Students (Model Text)" (hereinafter referred to as "Training Contract").
The problems of “difficulty in refunding fees” and “difficulty in safeguarding rights” of off-campus training institutions have been around for a long time. Some off-campus training institutions have repeatedly reported violations of fees and money “run away”. And this has nothing to do with the industry's "prepaid" consumption model.
In this regard, the “Opinions on Regulating the Development of Out-of-School Training Institutions” issued by the General Office of the State Council in August 2018 clearly stipulates that training institutions should coordinate with the teaching arrangements during the charging period, and cannot charge a one-time charging time span of more than 3 months. cost. However, according to Xiong Bingqi, deputy dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, there are still training institutions that play "scratching the ball" and charge fees in violation of regulations. For example, the training fee for one year is divided into 4 contracts, and each contract is charged no more than 3 months; The parents of other trainees cooperated with the illegal operation of the training institutions under the confusion of discounts offered by the training institutions.
"The contract is not standardized, the rights and obligations of the training institution and the trainer are not clear, and the training institution unilaterally proposes the "overlord clause", and uses the characteristics of the parents' lack of awareness of rights protection to lure parents to sign contracts that violate the regulations of the relevant national normative training institutions The situation is widespread." In Xiong Bingqi's view, this is an important reason for the continuous disputes between trainers and training institutions. When the trainers want to protect their rights according to the contract, they find that the contract itself has loopholes or "traps" set by the institution, so " Safeguarding rights is difficult."
Xiong Bingqi believes that the issuance of the "Training Contract" can effectively solve these problems. It is reported that before this, Guangdong Province, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province and other places have tried to formulate contract templates to standardize training methods and training fees. The "Training Contract" issued by the two departments this time is the industry's first national demonstration text, with a total of 11 articles, which fully considers the responsibility, rights and interests of the parties in each link of the primary and secondary school students in the process of participating in off-campus training The relationship covers training items, training requirements, dispute handling, etc. In particular, it provides detailed provisions on training collection and refund fees and liability for breach of contract.
"As a market player, disputes between training institutions and parents will eventually need to be settled through legal channels based on contracts. Contracts have become an important basis for ensuring the rights and interests of all parties." Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, believes that deepening The rule of law is an effective strategy to regulate training outside the school, and the "Training Contract" is an exploration to deepen the rule of law. It is of great significance to standardize training service behavior, protect the legitimate rights and interests of both parties, and promote the healthy development of the training market.
Dong Shengzu, director and researcher of the Institute of Private Education of the Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, believes that from the perspective of parents or students, the formulation and release of the "Training Contract" has properly regulated the rights of training institutions that are in a dominant position in trading. It is helpful to prevent some training institutions from using standard contracts to exempt their responsibilities, increase the responsibilities of students, exclude the main rights of students, and damage the legal rights of students. At the same time, this is also a powerful protection for the legitimate rights and interests of training institutions. When a dispute occurs, the training institution can use the contract as a basis to deal with related disputes in accordance with the law, so as to effectively resist some irrational excessive rights protection actions may cause damage to its own interests.
"Because the implementation of the model text is a flexible administrative guidance act, the regulator takes a neutral position and promotes a contract that is neither conducive to the parties to the contract nor the third party, for the reference of the main body of the contract. To some extent, this has achieved the policy objectives of'suppressing adulterers, advising fools, and pre-regulating those who collaborate with each other to benefit others and harm others', and reflects a new direction for the transformation of government functions." In Dong Shengzu's view, The issuance of the model text dealt with the boundary between public power and private rights more carefully and accurately, and showed the attitude of the government ruled by law, limited government, and serving the government.
Chu Zhaohui also believes that in recent years, the reform strategy of governing teaching according to law and coordinating inside and outside the school has become increasingly clear and firm. This time, the government department has developed a model text for training institutions, and has taken a solid step in deepening the rule of law. In the future, it will continue to adhere to the established path of systematic governance, continue to further promote the balanced development of education, deepen the reform of the educational evaluation system and reduce the number of The degree of reliance on test scores can enable parents to reduce their expectation of excessive utilitarian training, and reduce the training content of training institutions to cross the border; guide the training institutions to operate in compliance with various market entities, and form a more comprehensive legalized market system as a whole. Only in this way can we create a self-discipline environment in which various subjects have perseverance.
However, in this process, Chu Zhaohui said that the actions of the administrative department should not be the only thing, but that the relevant parties should be actively involved. Multi-party advancement can better play the expected effect of the model text.
China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Sun Qingling Source: China Youth Daily
June 22, 2020 version 05