15-Year-Old Kindergarten Teacher Beat Students, Allegedly Fed Pupil Classmate’s Leftovers

A 15-year-old teacher, who was hired against the laws in China to teach at a kindergarten, was accused of beating students and feeding at least one of them, scraps of food.

The incidents took place in the state-run Zhangwu Central Kindergarten in the city of Anyang, central China's Henan province, which has 140 pupils and 12 teachers. The teacher who was accused of doling out the harsh punishments for students was identified as Xiao Wen. She was fired, following the accusations, Mail Online reported.

However, according to law enforcement authorities she will not be criminally charged as she was underage. The legal working age in China is 16 years.

Surveillance footage obtained by Chinese media from the classroom where Xiao taught, showed the teacher inflicting a number punishments on the students on a number of days, earlier last month. On Dec. 6, the teacher was seen hitting the arm of a pupil, while on Dec. 16 she was seen dragging another student by the ear. Two days later, she was caught on camera beating two other boys from the classroom.

While police officers from the Anyang Public Security Bureau claimed that Xiao was 15 years old, the father of five-year-old Xiao Lie, who was a student at the kindergarten, said that after pressing for more information about the accused teacher, he discovered that she was only 12 years old. According to authorities, Wen’s age on her ID was inaccurate.

Lie’s father said that he guessed something was wrong with his son, when the five-year-old was unable to sleep at night and kept on insisting to be shifted to a different kindergarten. Upon probing further, Lie’s father discovered that his son has been beaten by the accused and fed his classmate’s leftovers.

Lei's class teacher, who was not named, confirmed children being given food that had already been partially eaten by other students. “The other child had only taken one bite into the food [that was given to Xiao Lei],” she said. “The teacher [Wen] then took the food over and gave it to another pupil.”

In her defense, Wen told local media that she fed Lie, food scraps because she thought he was not properly nourished.

She also added the kindergarten shouldered full responsibility of the physical and emotional abuse that transpired in the classroom after the institution had failed to substantially verify the teacher’s ID before employing her. Apparently there was a shortage of teachers at the kindergarten and oversight was a result of the immediacy by which the employment procedure ran.

The class teacher said that Wen’s family background was also taken into consideration when she was given the job. “[Wen's] life is poor, her mother is crippled and her father is mute,” she said, emphasizing the fact that the accused was in dire need of employment.

The news comes after Liu Yanan, a former teacher at the RYB Education New World kindergarten in Beijing was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for pricking children with needles. Investigation into the incidents took place in November 2017, when parents of toddlers who attended the high-end, bilingual Chinese-English school, noticed needle marks on the children’s body parts, Channel News Asia reported.