Discipline Without Corporal Punishment

What counts as corporal punishment

The Ministry's guidance defines it functionally: an act done for the purpose of punishment, in which a teacher applies physical force to a student — or has the student, or a third party, do so — or requires the student to hold a particular physical position, such that the student objectively suffers physical pain or bodily or mental harm.

Read that second clause again, because it is the one that catches well-meaning foreign teachers. Press-ups as a penalty, running laps as a penalty, holding arms out, squatting, kneeling, or standing far beyond a reasonable period are all capable of being corporal punishment. Intent to be harsh is not required, and “it's just exercise” is not a defense.

What you MAY do

The permitted general measures come from the Ministry's 學校訂定教師輔導與管教學生辦法注意事項 (as amended 5 February 2024). The ones actually available to you in an English lesson:

A useful rule: if it is not on this list, do not reach for it. Collective punishment — the whole class stays in because one student misbehaved — is not on it. Neither is punishment for poor test results.

The hard limits

• No physical force不得體罰
  Including grabbing an arm to move a student, pushing, flicking, or tapping with an object. The one exception is genuine danger, below.
• No physical positions as penalty
  Press-ups, squats, laps, holding out arms, kneeling. This is the clause most often broken by accident.
• No humiliation
  Respect for the student's dignity is a stated principle of the guidance. Mocking a student in front of the class, or remarks about their family or intelligence, are not discipline.
• No punishment for grades
  Academic results are not a behavior matter.
• Confiscation is temporary
  You may hold an item that is disrupting the lesson, but it must be returned. Anything beyond the end of the lesson goes through 學務處 — do not keep a student's phone overnight.

The emergency exception

Where there is a risk of harm to another person's life or body, a student may be physically removed from the scene, and outside help sought. The February 2024 amendment also strengthened your position in the other direction: in urgent situations, 學務處 and 輔導室 cannot refuse a teacher's request for assistance.

In practice: if a fight starts, your job is to protect the other students, call for help immediately, and not to become the person who wrestles a teenager. Send a student to the office if you have no other way to raise the alarm.

Your actual position as a foreign teacher

You generally hold no formal disciplinary authority in the school's system. That sounds like a weakness and mostly is not — what you have instead is the relationship, the seating plan, the lesson design, and a co-teacher who can say in three seconds of Chinese what would take you five minutes of English.

The escalation ladder, in order: handle it yourself in the moment (a look, a name, a seat change) → your co-teacher, during the lesson if needed → the homeroom teacher 導師, who holds the real relationship with that student and their family → 學務處 (生教組) for anything serious or repeated. Skipping straight to the office for small things spends credibility you will want later; never escalating at all is how a class becomes unteachable by March.

If you have already crossed a line

Everyone has moments. If you shouted, or grabbed a wrist, or made a class do laps before you knew the rule: tell your co-teacher the same day, in your own words, before anyone else describes it. A teacher who reports their own mistake is a colleague having a bad day. The identical event, first described by a student to a parent three days later, becomes something else entirely — and if a student appears to have been hurt, the reporting duty in Module 4 applies regardless of who caused it.

One thing to do this week

Agree a signal with your co-teacher — a word, a look — that means “take this one, I'm getting nowhere.” Deciding it in a calm week is the difference between a smooth handover and an argument in front of thirty students.