In South Korea, parents and sometimes students can evaluate teachers anonymously. But after a teacher died of suicide in July, the ministry of Education aims to restore their authority.
The Ministry of Education of South Korea announced that the teacher evaluations are suspended and postponed for a year.
“It has been about ten years since the teacher evaluation system was launched, and I think it’s time to redesign it because the conditions for students and teachers have changed a lot,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Lee Joo-ho during a press conference on September 11.
In South Korea, parents and sometimes students can actively participate in teachers’ evaluations, and influence their careers. After a few years of test pilots, the teacher competency development evaluation system was introduced in all schools nationwide in 2010 to improve teachers’ skills by receiving feedback from different people in a collaborative manner.
Every year from September to November, they can rate their satisfaction with the teaching, the teachers’ competencies, and write open comments teachers can read, but without knowing who is behind them as they are sent anonymously.
But the system has been denounced by teacher unions, which seek to abolish it.
An elementary school teacher died by suicide in a classroom
Mr. Lee’s announcement is part of a series of measures and draft bills that aim to “restore teachers’ authority” amid a heavy atmosphere surrounding the Korean education system.
They follow the emotion sparked by the death by suicide of a 23-year-old elementary school teacher in July. She was found dead in a classroom by her colleagues. It was later revealed that she had been suffering from pressure from work and was also dealing with complaints from parents.
Most recently, a school child had cut open a classmate’s head with a pencil during her class, prompting various calls and messages from parents until late into the night.
The tragic event led to weeks of protests for dozens of thousands of teachers. It also opened a Pandora’s box with teachers starting to share their stories and experiences of overbearing and overprotective parents raising their children in a very competitive society who end up bullying and harassing teachers.
New guidelines released at the beginning of September say that teachers can now remove students from the classroom when they disturb the class and that they can restrain them if necessary.
The ministry of Education plans to partner with the ministry of Health to provide a mental health program for teachers, while teacher unions have been alerting about the rate of suicides in the profession.
Authorities also plan to improve the law enforcement process “to protect teachers from indiscriminate reports of child abuse.”
In fact, teachers may be reported for child abuse when restraining violent students or scolding them, which means teachers can lose their jobs immediately. And teachers argue some parents abuse a child welfare act passed in 2014 that automatically suspends a teacher charged with child abuse.
A redesign of the teachers’ evaluation system
Last December, a poll conducted by the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, an organization against the evaluation system since its beginning, of 6,507 teachers showed that 31% have already been directly harmed by receiving disparagement, abusive language, insults or sexual comments in their evaluations.
The Federation of Teachers’ Federation criticizes a system that, beyond the issue of anonymous comments, has been “reduced to impression and popularity evaluation.”
On the other hand, teachers may also be criticized for pressuring students during the evaluation period to get good ratings.
Most parents behave correctly, according to the Student, Parent, and Teacher Human Rights Protection Association. But it fears that, as parents, communication channels to express their concerns will be cut off, said the civic group representative Shin Min-hyang to the BBC.
In June, the ministry of Education warned that inappropriate comments unrelated to educational activities may be punished according to relevant laws.
The ministry will this week “openly discuss the policies that teachers want,” starting with the evaluation process. But he only mentioned a redesign and not an abolition.
