Credit: VCG

On April 6th, China’s top education authority has released a draft regulation for the protection of minors. The new regulation is open for public comments until April 23rd and is part of detailed measures under the newly revised Minor Protection Law that will take effect on June 1st.

According to the draft, schools for compulsory education are not allowed to organize collective tutoring on national holidays, weekends, and semester breaks. Schools should cut excessive workloads for students by instructing and supervising teachers to arrange homework following the regulations. 

Plus, communication between school and family should be improved to ensure students’ enough sleep. Data from the Ministry of Education shows that the average sleep duration of primary and junior high school students in China is 9.5 hours and 8.4 hours, respectively.

Insufficient sleep is prevalent across students in various age groups. A document released by MOE on April 2nd has recommended that primary school students should regularly sleep 10 hours per 24 hours, junior high school students should sleep 9 hours per 24 hours, and high school students should sleep 8 hours per 24 hours.

Thus, the document mentioned that after-school tutoring service providers should end all the courses no later than 20:30, and live-streaming courses should end no later than 21:00. Plus, companies should not offer online game services for minors between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. local time.

Looking back to the draft, schools are required to monitor and guide students’ physical and mental health. 

And the most important is, schools are asked to take measures to avoid behavior that would constitute sexual harassment toward minors by teachers, including “affection between teachers and students, verbal and physical sexual suggestion, and showing obscene materials to students”.

Besides, protecting students from bullying in school is also mentioned in the draft. The regulation considers both verbal and physical behavior, including mocking and slandering, as well as damage to other people’s property. Isolating other classmates should also be stopped.

As reported by Global Times, “China has seen a rise in the number of cases of sexual assault against children aged from 7 to 15, and there were 71 cases of sexual assault by teachers or other staff members”, according to data from the China Foundation of Culture and Art for Children in 2020.