Regulations

Local education authorities and schools have started rolling out regulations to control these WeChat groups

On Oct 15, the education bureau of Chengxi district in Xining, Qinghai province, sent out 10 rules-five do's and five don'ts-for online groups between schools and parents.

Among the five don'ts: homework and students' scores and rankings should not be shared in the groups; and teachers should refrain from praising students or criticizing them in the groups. Moreover, announcements should be sent during working hours and parents do not have to reply or like them.

On Oct 19, the education bureau in Hengshui, Hebei province, issued similar guidelines, forbidding teachers from assigning homework in the groups. It added that parents should not post sycophantic replies or advertisements or canvass votes if their child is in the running for a prize or title.

Also in October, Wenhui Middle School in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, announced that only one WeChat group may be established for each class, and the purpose of the group should be limited to posting important announcements.

Xiong Bingqi, deputy head of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, said online channels cannot necessarily solve offline problems, such as the peer pressure endured by parents and the huge competition they face to provide the best education for their child.

China's unbalanced education system-with its strong emphasis on grades and rankings, and its famously tough national college entrance exam-has created an environment of intense competition and anxiety among parents and students, according to Xiong.

The growing popularity of new tools such as WeChat groups has reshaped the way parents and teachers interact, and exacerbated feelings of anxiety, which frequently manifest themselves in extreme behavior, he said.

"Teachers, for their part, are already overworked and hardly want to spend their free time being pestered by parents. Before long, everyone just feels exhausted, and no one has actually achieved anything," he said.

He added that the only way to bring calm back to these groups is to establish firm rules so they revert to the roles for which they were originally intended.