Hotline on teachers’ rights to open next month

A hotline will open next month, allowing teachers to report cases of infringement upon their teaching rights, the education ministry said Tuesday.

The plan was announced after the apparent suicide of a young public school teacher distressed by malicious parental complaints last year led to a series of mass rallies by teachers demanding protection of their rights.

Under the plan, the ministry will launch the “teaching right infringement hotline number 1395” on March 4, the first day of the upcoming semester.

Any teaching staff member from across the nation can call the number to report cases of rights infringement or receive counseling or legal support on the matter. Counseling will also be available on the KakaoTalk messenger application.

The service will be test-operated for the first two weeks before going into full operation, the ministry said.

In a related measure, schools will also be newly required to set up a response team to address complaints from parents, a task that had previously been handled by individual teachers and a source of distress for them.

Complaints unresolved by schools will be referred to higher-level response teams to be established by regional education offices, the education ministry said.

Under the new system, malicious or illegal parental complaints or demands that go beyond teachers’ duties will be disregarded without a response, while cases of parental complaints infringing upon teachers’ rights will be addressed by the committee for the protection of teachers’ rights.