Sat, Jan 20, 2024 page2

• Groups call for action to ensure campus safety

  SCHOOL VIOLENCE: The government should require parents to take responsibility for out-of-control students and consequences of their actions, Wang Han-yang said

  • By Rachel Lin and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  Teacher and parent groups yesterday called on educators and families to work together to improve safety on campus, citing Ministry of Education reports showing a 60 percent surge in school violence.

  Ministry data show that 27,000 incidents of violence or deviant behavior were reported last year at schools, a 60 percent increase over the previous year, Action Alliance on Basic Education chairman Wang Han-yang (王瀚陽) told a news conference in Taipei.

  These cases include 9,370 incidents of violence or deviancy at elementary schools, a 94 percent year-on-year increase, and 8,330 at junior and senior-high schools, a 58 percent year-on-year increase, he said.

  

  Students sit in an exam room at the high school affiliated with National Taiwan Normal University yesterday.

  Photo: CNA

  The government should acknowledge families’ role in education by amending the law to require parents to take full responsibility for out-of-control children and cooperate with guidance programs at schools, Wang said.

  Wang urged officials to convene a society and school safety network conference to improve the competence of family education centers and to institute one paid parental leave day per year for each child in the family.

  Last month’s stabbing death of a junior-high student on campus in New Taipei City was not an isolated incident, but indicative of a trend, National Federation of Teachers’ Unions president Hou Chun-liang (侯俊良) said.

  The killing showed the importance of amending the law to hold parents responsible in cases in which failures in family education have led to tragedy and to provide help to families, he said.

  Parents are educators’ best and most important partners in protecting children at school, making cooperation essential, Wu said.

  Teacher and parent groups broadly agree that both sides must work together to ensure safety, but mechanisms to achieve this have to be discussed in a conference backed and mediated by the government, he said.

  The ministry should empower educators to give mandatory guidance to parents lacking in parental skills, a proposal officials rejected at the society and school safety network conference on Jan. 4, he said.

  The Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of Justice should work together to develop and implement an integrated approach to school safety, he said.

  Making parents legally responsible for harm caused by their negligence is an indispensable step in ensuring the security and happiness of all students, Wu said, adding that there has been no hint of the proposal causing friction between teachers and parents.

  A petition for legal amendments to that effect had garnered 3,500 signatures at the time of the event, he said.
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