TOPICS 

    Subscribe to our newsletter

     By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use.

    FOLLOW US

    • About Us
    • |
    • Contribute
    • |
    • Contact Us
    • |
    • Sitemap
    封面
    NEWS

    Schools Shouldn’t Ask for Criminal Record Checks, Police Say

    Lawyer argues that such policies violate China’s constitution.

    Police in eastern China have called out a primary school for asking parents to prove they don’t have criminal backgrounds — a rare criterion which is only required of migrant workers.

    When an out-of-district couple wanted to enroll their child at the public Houcai Primary School in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, the school sent a letter requesting a background check to police in the parents’ place of residence, neighboring Huangyan District, on June 24.

    Police in Huangyan District sent the certificate but also added some criticism to their response. “Our country has implemented compulsory education — is it necessary to ask parents for such a certificate?” they asked. The police also questioned whether such a request was in line with regulations from the education authorities and suggested the school cancel this policy.

    The exchange was picked up by news outlets and net users when a lawyer voicing support for the police posted photos of the letters on his Weibo microblog on Sunday. An officer at the station in Huangyan told Sixth Tone’s sister publication The Paper on Sunday that the letters were genuine.

    Yang Junmao, a lawyer in the field of education, told Sixth Tone that China’s compulsory education law allows local governments to issue “specific regulations” for enrolling nonlocal students, though this would not justify criminal record checks. “The regulations are supposed to verify whether the parents are working in the area, not judge their morals,” Yang said. “It’s the children who are entering the campus, not their parents.”

    Luqiao District’s education bureau told local media that although schools in the district used to ask nonlocal parents for proof that they had no criminal records, such requirements were canceled earlier this year. The bureau said it will ask the school to rectify the situation. Neither the school nor the education bureau could be reached for comment on Tuesday.

    Requests for criminal record checks are frequently directed at families who don’t have local household registrations, or hukou. In June, a public school in southern China’s Guangdong province reportedly required the same certificate from parents who are migrant workers, and the province’s education bureau in 2012 proposed a credit system for school admissions that would deduct points from children whose parents had criminal backgrounds. Beijing Youth Daily reported in June that this clause had been removed in a subsequent version of the plan.

    Luo Qian, a Shanghai-based lawyer who specializes in administrative law, told Sixth Tone that as far as he is aware, there are no regulations that allow schools to refuse children whose parents have a criminal history. In any case, he said, asking nonlocals for such documents violates the equality principle in China’s constitution, as well as parts of the compulsory education law, which states that local governments should provide equal opportunities for children whose parents or statutory guardians do not have a local hukou.

    “Such requirements, if they come from local education bureaus, not only are irrational, but also contradict higher-level legislation,” Luo said. “The regulation has little positive influence but a big negative impact, which is that children with criminal parents would be deprived of education rights.”

    Editor: Kevin Schoenmakers.

    (Header image: A young girl watches her father fill out a registration form for a primary school in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, May 7, 2011. Xu Ying/VCG)