China mandates background checks on school staff

The Ministry of Education has asked schools and universities to conduct mandatory background checks on candidates who work on campuses for sexual crimes before they are hired, China Daily reported Friday.

For primary and secondary schools, when they plan to hire staff, they need to submit an application to local education authorities to check the national teacher management information system whether the candidates have committed sex crimes, the newspaper said, quoting a notice issued by the ministry on Thursday.

They also need to check whether the candidates have been included on the blacklist for teachers and whether their teaching credentials are valid or not, according to the notice.

Higher education institutions should conduct the checks themselves, it said.

The notice also stressed that education authorities and universities should not violate the privacy of the candidates when checking the information.

A guideline issued by the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Education in November said people who have committed crimes such as sexual assault, abuse, abduction and violence against children should be banned for life from working in the education sector.

Those who have served prison sentences and are deprived of their political rights are also banned for life from working in the sector.

The newspaper said that also on Thursday, the education ministry published on its website the names of seven teachers who have violated work ethics, including one who had been stripped of his teaching credentials and put on a blacklist for teaching after he sexually harassed female students by sending them obscene texts, pictures, videos and touched them inappropriately, and another who had been sentenced to eight years in prison for sexual assault and molesting underage female students.