seoul elementary and middle schools to trial parent visit reservation system
2024-08-29
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xinhua news agency, beijing, august 29th. in recent months, a number of primary and secondary schools in seoul, the capital of south korea, have piloted a parent visit appointment system: parents can no longer visit their children or teachers at school as they did before, but need to make an appointment by phone or online and can only make the trip after approval from the school.
on may 27, 2020, students from seoul seriun elementary school returned to school accompanied by their parents. xinhua news agency (photo by li xianghao)south korea's joongang ilbo reported that the pilot project began in november last year and covered 68 elementary and middle schools in seoul. from october this year, about 1,300 elementary and middle schools in seoul will also implement a parent visit appointment system.
the vice principal of an elementary school in eastern seoul that participated in the pilot project said, "before, some parents would follow their children into school and even peek into the classroom through the glass window after the class started," but now such phenomena no longer exist and the order on campus and in the classroom has improved.
on july 18 last year, a teacher in his 20s committed suicide at a primary school in seocho district, seoul, shocking korean society. korean media reported that the teacher was believed to have been harassed by students' parents. many teachers and the public called for a thorough investigation of the matter to create a healthier and safer school environment.
the parent visit appointment system has sparked heated discussion. some people support it, some call for optimizing the specific process, but some have expressed doubts and opposition.
the seoul education department recently conducted a questionnaire survey on teachers in pilot schools. about 72% of the 252 respondents hoped that the parent visit appointment system would be fully implemented. the seoul teachers' union conducted a questionnaire survey on 51 teachers, and the results showed that 36 of them believed that the implementation of the parent visit appointment system "is likely" to have a beneficial impact on teaching activities.
some teachers reported that some problems occurred during the pilot process and hoped that adjustments and improvements would be made in the future. for example, the appointment system of some schools set the class teacher as the approver, and as a result, a large number of appointment applications were all "flooded" to the class teacher, causing his mobile phone to ring constantly, and the class teacher was too busy to handle it, and was miserable; some parents made an appointment to visit a certain teacher, but actually visited another teacher when they arrived at school, causing a certain degree of misunderstanding and chaos.
some parents complained that when grandparents needed to visit their children at school or communicate with teachers, they faced many obstacles in operating the appointment system because they were not familiar with mobile phones.
"parents are not dangerous people. the school is too closed," one parent posted online. "well-intentioned parents going to school, or people who need to go to school urgently, should not face obstacles," another wrote.
however, many parents also expressed their understanding of the appointment system. a parent of a sixth-grade elementary school student recalled that a strange man once mixed in with the parents and tried to approach the mothers of several students. the parent said: "i hope parents understand that although the appointment system brings inconvenience, its purpose is to create a safer campus environment for teachers and students." (yang shuyi)
