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| Students hold a ceremony to present flowers to their teachers in celebration of Teachers' Day, Monday, at a middle school in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. Yonhap |
By Jun Ji-hye
Cho Hee-yeon, the superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, has vowed to more strictly control the visits of parents to schools in a move that he claims will better protect teachers.
Writing on his Facebook account on the occasion of Teachers' Day, Monday, Cho called on the Seoul Metropolitan Council to promptly pass a bill to legislate an ordinance aimed at protecting the occupational activities of teachers.
"As soon as the council passes the bill, I will create a rigorous system, including an advance reservation system, to control visits from outsiders including parents, to schools," he wrote.
The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education drew up the bill last year following a series of incidents concerning the infringement of teachers' rights.
The bill contains a regulation that a head of a school can limit access to visitors including parents if they disrupt students' learning or threaten the safety of teachers.
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| Cho Hee-yeon, superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education |
"I will also actively ask the Ministry of Education to revise laws governing child abuse and elementary and middle school education as well as the status of teachers in a bid to prevent teachers from becoming the victims of false accusations of child abuse," Cho wrote.
According to the education ministry, 11,148 cases concerning infringement of teachers' rights were reported from 2017 to 2021. Of them, 888 cases, or 7.9 percent, were related to violence by students inflicted on teachers.
Cases of false accusations of child abuse against teachers have been on the rise as well.
In 2021, when a high school teacher woke up a student who was sleeping with his head down on the desk, the student used abusive language against the teacher and reported him to the police on charges of abuse. The teacher was cleared of the charges after a police investigation but is still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the ministry.
According to the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations, Sunday, job satisfaction levels for the profession hit an all-time low this year, as only 23.6 percent of teachers at kindergarten, elementary, middle and high schools and university expressed being satisfied with their job in the latest survey.
In 2006 when the survey started, 67.8 percent expressed job satisfaction.
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