January 31, 2013

A group of parents and students at an Osaka public high school, where a student committed suicide due to a teacher’s physical punishment, on January 30 urged the city education board to allow the group to join in efforts for the elimination of physical punishment at the school.

The group held its inauguration meeting on January 27 with the attendance of 170 people, including students at the troubled Sakuranomiya High School, their parents, former students, and lawyers.

At a meeting with the education commission on January 30, lawyer and group’s provisional head Iga Okikazu pointed out that although the commission should work together with teachers, students, and parents to put an end to corporal punishment at the school, it unilaterally revised the school’s entrance examination system without hearing the views of students or parents concerned.

A petition submitted to the commission asks its opinion about cooperation with Sakuramoniya High School students and their parents in making efforts to remove violent punishment abuse from the school.

It criticizes the commission’s plan to shake up the school’s teaching staff as producing a negative impact on the efforts, and states that the current staff should play their role in promoting the efforts.

A student at Sakuranomiya High School in Osaka City on December 23, 2012 killed himself after being punished violently by his teacher, who is a supervisor of his basketball club, on the previous day during a basketball game.


Related past article:
> Physical punishment at school is ‘permissible’: Osaka mayor [January 11, 2013]
> Osakans criticize mayo’s call to cancel high school entrance exam [January 21&22, 2013]