China on Thursday pledged stiffer oversight of preschool teachers, including closer checks on their qualifications, following an outcry over allegations of child abuse at a private kindergarten in Beijing.
BEIJING: China on Thursday pledged stiffer oversight of preschool teachers, including closer checks on their qualifications, following an outcry over allegations of child abuse at a private kindergarten in Beijing.
The case has become a lighting rod for anger at a lack of trained teachers, low wages and poor oversight in China’s massive and fast-growing private pre-school sector.
Claims that teachers at a school in the capital run by New York-listed RYB Education had abused children sparked an outpouring of anger online last week.
On Tuesday, police in Beijing dismissed as unfounded some of the claims, such as one that children were given tablets or another that doctors had undressed them for medical checkups.
The education ministry will do more to check the qualifications of new entrants to teaching and will adopt tougher oversight measures, deputy minister Tian Xuejun said, in reply to a question from Reuters about the scandal.
