The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) found that an education office's policy that limits the grounds for terminating parental leave for education officials to "miscarriage or child's death, childbirth" and restricts early return to work for any other reason constitutes discrimination.
According to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on the 27th, an elementary school teacher sought to take one year of parental leave but applied for an early return to work to coincide with the start of the second semester after the child began attending daycare and the grandparents agreed to help with caregiving during the leave. The request for early return, however, was denied on the grounds that it did not fall under the permissible termination reasons for parental leave—"miscarriage, child's death, childbirth." The teacher then filed a petition with the NHRC.
The education office told the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that if teachers repeatedly take and end parental leave at their preferred times, it could infringe on students' right to learn due to homeroom teacher changes during the semester and make it difficult to ensure job stability for substitute teachers, so it disallowed the early return.
The NHRC's Committee for Remedy of Discrimination determined that the education office's restriction of early return reasons to miscarriage, child's death, and childbirth constitutes discriminatory conduct that infringes on the right to equality. It exceeded the scope of discretion set out in the Ministry of Education's "Personnel Practice for Education Officials" and in manuals of many city and provincial education offices, and it excessively restricted the rights of those on parental leave.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) recommended that the education office not limit the grounds for terminating parental leave for education officials to specific reasons, but instead apply the policy after comprehensively reviewing individual circumstances.