Parents demand compensation after teacher taped shut children's mouths

Parents of children whose mouths were taped shut by a Russian teacher at a private school in Shanghai are demanding the tuition fees they paid be refunded.

K & H International School's Changning branch earlier issued a statement apologizing for the incident on Nov 15, when the female teacher used double-sided adhesive tape to seal the mouths of a number of children who were being disruptive.

The district education department subsequently ordered the branch to cease all of its activities.

"It is very clear that they did something wrong, but until now they've not offered a solution, not even a face-to-face apology," said Yang Huijun, the father of a 4-year-old boy who had tape put on his mouth.

"They keep citing cultural differences and saying the teacher was doing it playfully, but the incident made me feel horrible because there are so many parents who have sent their children to the school."

Another point of contention was that the school had employed a Russian national to teach American English, instead of a US expatriate as it had claimed, Yang said.

The school declined to comment on Tuesday, but in a written statement sent over the weekend, it said an apology had been issued to all parents on behalf of the management and the teacher involved had been dismissed.

"But we won't give in to unfair demands," it said, adding that someone had distributed a list of its Chinese employees' private telephone numbers, leading to a number of harassing calls and texts.

With the written statement, the school included examples of positive comments from other parents, lauding its performance as a training institute and criticizing the "irrational parents" who were making the complaints.

A further meeting between the school and representatives of the parents concerned has been scheduled for Tuesday night.

In an unrelated story, the people's procuratorate of Shanghai‘s Jing'an district said on Monday that a Spanish man, working as an English language teacher at another training institute in the city, had been detained for drug trafficking.

The 28-year-old, identified only as Anthony, flew from Spain to China on Oct 14 with 277.1 grams of marijuana in his stomach, in 24 separate packages.

He later visited a hospital in the city's downtown complaining of severe stomachache, after he was unable to excrete the drugs naturally.

Hospital officials alerted the police and the man was prepped for surgery, but he passed the drugs naturally on Oct 21.

Fang Aiqing contributed to this story.