New Taipei corporal punishment preschool ordered to halt enrollment for 1 year

Taipei, Aug. 8 (CNA) A private preschool in New Taipei where a since-suspended caregiver was found to have physically mistreated children has been ordered to suspend enrollment for one year.

According to New Taipei's Education Department, Lin Hsiu-chen (林秀珍), a teacher at Hess Young Scholar's English School (學仕幼兒園) in Sanchong District, disciplined children by forcing them to do bridge poses, jumping for extended periods and hitting them on the head and limbs with notebooks.

For illegally inflicting corporal punishment on a total of five children, Lin was fined the maximum amount of NT$600,000 (US$18,474) and banned for life from working as an educator, the department said.

Lin has been suspended from post since parents first reported the allegations of abuse in May, the department added.

In addition, the owner of the preschool, surnamed Chien (簡), was fined NT$60,000 for mismanagement, the maximum financial penalty, the department said.

Chien was also fined a total of NT$126,000 for other infractions, including inadequate teacher-student ratio, not meeting health and sanitary conditions and employment of ineligible persons as caregivers, the department said.

The department said that children currently enrolled in the preschool will be unaffected.

However, the preschool must explain to parents its violations, as well as the subsequent arrangement of its teachers and caregivers, improvement measures and refund procedures, it added.