Hundreds of teachers took part in a rally in Taipei yesterday calling for the abolition of campus incident resolution meetings to stop the waste of administrative resources and ensure decent work for frontline primary and secondary school teachers.
The National Federation of Teachers Unions hosted the rally near the Ministry of Education to oppose threatening teachers with dismissal and reputation damage using the mechanism.
Campus incident resolution meetings were abused by some students and parents to blame hardworking teachers for trivial matters, or by some school personnel to target teachers in workplace politics, it said.
Photo: CNA
Federation president Hou Chun-liang (侯俊良) said such meetings already became “firing ranges” where many personnel without teaching experience were allowed to become campus incident investigators after they received only three days of training.
“How could frontline teachers’ qualifications and careers be determined by these inexperienced investigators?” he said.
Demonstrators at the rally performed street theater — allegedly based on a true event — in which a teacher was subjected to a campus incident resolution meeting and threatened to be dismissed after she asked a student to take his task of sweeping the floor during clean-up time seriously.
The theater showed the “student’s mother” believing that her son was emotionally blackmailed by the teacher and that sweeping the floor for 10 minutes was an “unreasonable demand.”
The federation’s Professional Development Center executive director Yeh Ming-cheng (葉明政) said teachers were left isolated and helpless in such situations.
Pingtung Education Industrial Union president Kuo Wei-chen (郭瑋真) said campus incident resolution meetings are squandering administrative resources at schools.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) said most teachers are devoted to their work and should not be regarded as potential criminals, urging the ministry to review relevant regulations.
The federation also called on the ministry and the legislature to consider removing Article 29 of the Teachers’ Act (教師法), which enables the ministry to set up mechanisms such as campus incident resolution meetings to determine the dismissal, non-renewal of appointment, suspension, or severance with pay of a teacher serving in primary or secondary schools.
Campus incident resolution meetings not only sideline such committees and measures, but also severely discriminate against primary and secondary-school teachers, the federation said.
The ministry yesterday in a statement said that it values opinions from teachers and would continue to seek advice from groups representing teachers, principals and parents, as well as other civic groups and local governments, to inform policy improvements.
The mechanism needs to be improved with supporting measures and the ministry would monitor its operation over the next six months, it said.
The issue should not be simply defined as whether to abolish the mechanism, the ministry said, adding that it would ensure teachers’ right to work as well as students’ right to education.
Additional reporting by CNA
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