Seoul education office to revise student rights ordinance following teacher's death

Cho Hee-yeon, superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, speaks during a meeting with middle school teachers at the office in Seoul, Aug. 8. The meeting was held to listen to their difficulties. Yonhap

By Jun Ji-hye

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education will launch a process to revise the student rights ordinance, which has been cited as one of the major factors infringing on teachers' rights, the education office announced Monday.

The office, led by progressive Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon, said it is working to revise the ordinance in such a way as to increase student accountability and better protect teachers' rights and their educational activities.

The move came after an elementary school teacher in her 20s ended her life inside her classroom in Seoul's Seocho District last month. The teacher's death triggered a torrent of speculation online that she suffered from constant harassment from the parents of some of her students.

The student rights ordinance was first enacted in 2010 by a progressive superintendent of education from Gyeonggi Province at the time and has since been enforced by seven regional education offices, including Seoul's.

The ordinance aims to view each student as an individual human being rather than a subject of control, banning corporal punishment and discrimination by teachers. Although it began with good intentions, it has faced criticism for only emphasizing students' wellbeing, while neglecting the rights and wellbeing of teachers.

“Respecting teachers' rights and complying with school regulations will be made mandatory in the revision,” an official from the Seoul education office said.

The revision will also prohibit anyone from disrupting reasonable actions of teachers taken to teach and guide students. It will also forbid the use of physical and verbal violence against educators as well as students.

The office will collect opinions from teachers' groups and students regarding its envisioned revision before submitting it to the Seoul Metropolitan Council at the end of the year or early next year.

The office will push to enact a separate ordinance aimed at better protecting teachers from excessive and malicious complaints made by parents or in legal disputes.

This is in response to criticism that many educators across the country have been suffering from indiscriminate accusations of child abuse filed by parents or students. According to teachers' unions, most of these cases resulted from reasonable attempts to guide students, such as physically intervening to stop a fight with a classmate or telling a noisy student in class to be quiet.

A teacher sheds tears during a rally in central Seoul, Aug. 5, while listening to a statement read out by a grieving family member of the young teacher who took her own life in her classroom last month. Yonhap

The recent death of the 24-year-old teacher has provoked calls to comprehensively overhaul the student rights ordinance, while others are demanding that the ordinance be abolished and a new ordinance be created.

A bill to abolish the ordinance is already pending at the Seoul Metropolitan Council. This could be a point of conflict with the Seoul education office, which is opposed to the abolishment.

“Some people are jumping on the recent incident and moving to diminish students' rights. We should watch out for it,” Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon said. “The Seoul education office will work to create schools where the rights of teachers and students can all be guaranteed.”

Also Monday, Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said that it questioned four parents and analyzed their mobile phones in connection with its ongoing investigation into the teacher's suicide, but found no evidence regarding the allegations that they had harassed the teacher.

According to the police, the four talked to the teacher over the phone until just before her death, and some of them were linked to a school violence case that occurred in her classroom.

“We will continue our investigation into another allegation that the teacher had suffered stress from work,” a police officer said.