Chinese students return to school amid zero local transmissions

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Students arrive at a primary school in Beijing, capital of China, March 1, 2021. Primary and middle schools in Bejing started the new semester on Monday. (Photo/China News Service)

Chinese students on Monday returned to campuses amid zero domestic COVID-19 transmissions for 14 consecutive days.

Schools in Beijing saw students wearing masks return to campus on a snowy Monday morning. When the Global Times visited Jingyuan school in Beijing's Shijingshan district on Monday morning, the reporter saw every student wearing a mask in class and were only allowed to enter the campus after having their body temperature checked.

Students arrive at a primary school in Beijing, capital of China, March 1, 2021. Primary and middle schools in Bejing started the new semester on Monday. (Photo/China News Service)

Beijing required students to return to the city 14 days ahead of the first school day. Returnees have to show their health QR codes and nucleic acid test results when they go back to school.

In order to ensure the safety of students, Beijing's primary and secondary schools have undergone thorough disinfection in preparation for the return of the students.

The Shuangyushu first primary school in Beijing also disinfected textbooks before they were delivered to 1,399 students.

The return of the students to campus came as the country recorded zero domestic cases for 14 successive days since February 14, according to data from the National Health Commission.  

The 14 successive days of zero domestic infections highlight the fact that China has weathered the epidemic challenge brought by the flow of people during Spring Festival, Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times.

"The overall epidemic situation in China is stable as China has brought an end to previous rounds of domestic outbreaks and the number of imported cases is also experiencing a downward trend," Wang said.

The reason why students could return to schools with a relaxed frame of mind is that the public has gained confidence in the country and its strong ability to handle outbreaks, Wang said. China usually takes about two or three weeks to overcome a round of infections, the expert said.

Students from middle and primary schools and kindergartens in Beijing ushered in the new semester as planned on March 1.Photo:Li Hao/GT

"As we usher in the year of the Ox, we have great expectations for the stable domestic epidemic situation, and I personally as a parent feel relieved to send my child back to school at a time when our country is reporting no cases," Zhang Jing, the mother of a five-year-old from Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.

Shijiazhuang, the capital city of North China's Hebei, where one of the most serious outbreaks occurred, will also see the return of 1.45 million students from elementary and middle schools to campus on Monday. Kindergarten students will start their classes after March 8.

China’s latest guideline on school disciplines to address growing tensions between teachers and parents

An educational campaign on preventing campus bullying is held at a primary school in Yuexiu district of Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province. Photo: VCG

In the latest guideline on primary and secondary school disciplines to come into effect on Monday, China for the first time defines and clarifies the content and scope of educational disciplines as well as the do's and don'ts for teachers, which aims to ease the escalating tensions between schools and parents on educating children, but detailed explanations for the guidelines are still needed, educational experts noted.

The Discipline Guidelines and Rules for Primary and Secondary Schools defines the term "school discipline" as the management of students who break school rules to correct their mistakes and keep them in line for the purpose of achieving educational goals. 

The guideline will be adopted in all primary and secondary schools nationwide as well as in secondary vocational schools, the People's Daily reported on Sunday. 

The guideline gives a clear explanation of students' actions that will count as "violating school regulations and requiring discipline," the report said, which includes disobeying teaching tasks on purpose, disrupting classroom order, smoking and drinking alcohol, and other behaviors that could pose dangers to the physical and psychological health of peers, such as bullying. 

It also categorizes the scope of disciplinary actions into three levels based on the seriousness of violation of such rules, which also involve different requirements for schools to inform the students' parents. 

For example, teachers are allowed to give timeouts or ask for written or oral apologies from students who moderately break school rules without informing the parents in advance. For those who commit serious violations, teachers must tell the parents before they give punishments to the students involved. 

Such a guideline is seen as a "considerate move" that will draw clear boundaries and solve disputes between the schools, students and parents. 

"With the implementation of this guideline, teachers can criticize improper behavior without worrying if the punishments are too light or too heavy, which would have brought objections from parents who thought them 'inappropriate,'" a middle school teacher, surnamed Hua, based in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu Province, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

The issuance of the guideline, which has become a heated topic on China's social media platforms, comes against the backdrop of escalating tensions between schools and parents over growing arguments on educating children in recent years. 

"To some extent, the guideline can address this problem, but educational authorities must lay out more details in order for schools to implement it," Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Xiong also noted that the rolling out of the guideline provides a legal basis that prevents parents from interfering in school management and teachers from abusing their powers.

Source: Global Times, by Liu Caiyu;

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