69% of Daejeon Teachers Have Directly Experienced Infringements on Educational Activities and Malicious Civil Complaints

Superintendent Transition Committee Survey Reveals 90.2% Support for Teacher Sabbatical System

Seokjin Oh, Governor-elect of Daejeon Office of Education (Photo by Transition Committee)

A survey revealed that 69.47% (1,213 individuals) of teachers at the Daejeon Office of Education have directly experienced infringements on their educational activities or malicious civil complaints within the past three years, indicating that violations of teachers' rights are at a critical level.

This was disclosed on June 30, when the 12th Daejeon Superintendent of Education Transition Committee announced the results of a survey conducted to develop customized policies for improving teacher treatment.

The survey was conducted from June 19 to June 23, targeting teachers from kindergartens, elementary, middle, high, and special schools. It covered three areas: measures to protect educational activities, ways to improve and adjust the current staff allowance system, and the potential introduction of a "teacher sabbatical system" (tentative name). A total of 1,746 teachers participated in the survey.

The greatest difficulty encountered during the handling of civil complaints was "psychological stress and burnout" (22.5%), followed by "the school's limited ability to respond" (16.5%).

Regarding the current response system for infringements on educational activities, more than half of respondents (57.5%) said they were dissatisfied, far exceeding those who were satisfied (8.5%). More than half of the respondents gave negative evaluations for all three major support systems provided by the education office (the integrated civil complaint task force, the one-stop legal support team, and the rapid response team for protecting educational activities), indicating a widespread perception that the current policies are ineffective.

For educational activities with significant responsibility and workload, such as overnight experiential programs, the majority of respondents felt that the existing allowances and travel expense levels were inadequate.

As for the need to introduce a "teacher sabbatical system" (tentative name), 90.2% agreed. Many respondents said that eligibility should take into comprehensive account teaching experience, work burden, and levels of burnout and stress.

In open-ended responses, many teachers suggested that incidents involving infringements on educational activities should be transferred to and handled exclusively by the education office, legal sanctions and penalties for malicious civil complaints should be strengthened, and amendments to laws such as the Child Abuse Act and laws against false accusations should be prioritized. There were also calls for institutional improvements to address the excessive burden of individual teacher responsibility and exemptions from legal liability.

Okseok Jin, Superintendent-elect, stated, "The results of this survey will be actively reflected in future policies to enhance teachers' rights and improve their treatment, laying the foundation for realizing a 'safe and happy school education'."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.