Allegations against teacher in Gateway school case

According to the 37-page conclusion issued on December 6, defendant Thuy (29 years old) was proposed by Cau Giay District Police to be prosecuted for the crime ofLack of responsibility causes serious consequences, according to Article 360 ​​of the 2015 Penal Code.

Mr. Doan Quy Phien (53 years old, driver) and Ms. Nguyen Bich Quy (55 years old, person who picked up and dropped off students at Gateway school) were proposed to be prosecuted for the crime.Involuntary manslaughteraccording to Article 128 of the Penal Code 2015.

Both crimes carry the same penalty range of non-custodial reform for up to 3 years or imprisonment for up to 5 years.

According to the investigation, Gateway International Primary School on Khuc Thua Du Street (Cau Giay District) requires homeroom teachers to take attendance at the beginning of class, write the number of students on the board and update the results on Sycamore school management software.

At around 7:50 a.m. on August 6, as the homeroom teacher of Tokyo Grade 1, Ms. Thuy took attendance and discovered that Long was absent without reason. She did not write the attendance number on the board or update the software. After teaching Vietnamese, at around 10 a.m., she was reminded by the school's staff to update the attendance results into the software. She said she did not know how to operate it and was instructed, while the school had already trained on how to use it.

The school administrator then marked the student absent with or without reason on the computer to guide Ms. Thuy. When the school administrator reminded her to check the information again for accuracy, Ms. Thuy did not check again but left the information that Long was absent with a reason and updated it on the software.

Authorities accused Ms. Thuy of not following school regulations on August 6, while understanding "what a homeroom teacher should do when a student is absent without reason." Accordingly, she did not ask the school staff to contact the student's family, nor did she directly "contact and discuss." The homeroom teacher's lack of responsibility led to Long being left in the car for 9 hours, dying of heat stroke.

In addition, on August 7, Ms. Thuy asked the school staff to check the attendance software and discovered that Long had been marked absent with a reason. She asked to change it to absent without reason, the investigation concluded.

In the case, Ms. Thuy was the only school employee who was prosecuted. The investigation agency's conclusion about Ms. Thuy's violations was different from the information previously released by the Cau Giay District Department of Education and Training, which said that the homeroom teacher had entered information into the Sycamore software to notify Long of his absence, but the responsible department of the school had not notified the parents.

On the evening of August 6, present at E Hospital in Hanoi with the victim's family, Ms. Tran Thi Hong Hanh, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Gateway School, also said that the head teacher took attendance and discovered that Long was not in class, so she reported it to the school management system, but "the teacher in charge of calling the parents was on leave, so there was a carelessness."

The investigation agency determined that other people involved in Gateway School such as the principal, the person in charge of discipline, the academic staff... had "fulfilled their assigned duties" so there was no basis for action. Specifically, principal Duong Thi Hoai Anh had applied for sick leave starting from June 1st so she was not responsible.

The academic staff has the function of synthesizing information on the school's management software, including attendance information to compare with parents' leave requests... The academic staff only urges the homeroom teacher to take attendance but "is not responsible for contacting parents when students are absent". On August 6, the academic staff reminded and directly supported Thuy to update the attendance on the system, but she did not check and marked Long as absent with permission.

The head of the student services team is responsible for managing all school buses and the contents of the school bus log. On August 6, the head of the team looked at the log and saw that Ms. Quy wrote "13 students have entered the class" so he did not contact the bus manager. Authorities said that the head of the service team had fulfilled his assigned duties and also had no responsibility to contact parents when students were absent without reason.

According to the investigation, on August 6, driver Phien drove a 16-seat Ford Transit with Ms. Quy to pick up Long and 12 students to take them to Gateway School. Ms. Quy was negligent and careless, leading to forgetting Long in the car. She still wrote in the diary, notifying that 13 students had arrived at class.

The police determined that Mr. Phien was also negligent and careless. After each trip, he did not check the passenger compartment. Nine hours later, at 3:45 p.m. the same day, when the bus returned to school, Long was found dead on the floor behind the driver's seat.

Long is the only son of Mr. and Mrs. Le Van Son. The day he was forgotten in the car was the 6-year-old boy’s second day of school. The family had paid nearly 152 million VND for Long’s first grade tuition at Gateway School.