Teachers ignoring students in life-threatening situations may be viewed by many as ethically unacceptable. In Jiangsu Province, that may soon be illegal.

A draft regulation on juvenile protection will be submitted later this month to provincial legislators, Yangtse Evening Post reported Thursday.

One of the highlights is that teachers need to place priority on saving students if incidents occur in schools.

The draft is a heavy blow on a widely controversial middle school teacher in Sichuan Province, who abandoned his students when the 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck on May 12.

Fan Meizhong, who is better known as Fan Paopao (Running Fan), a sarcastic name given by netizens, run out of the trembling school building alone during the earthquake and later blogged about his runaway.

Fan's school was in Dujiangyan, one of the worse-hit cities in the deadly earthquake.

The Chinese-language teacher later lost his teaching certificate and was called a "wimp" by Internet users and Chinese media. Even after that, he defended himself, saying there was no regulation stipulating a teacher must risk his life to save students in emergencies.

Last week, the Ministry of Education released an updated code of ethics for elementary and middle school teachers, hoping they would "take care of their students' safety," Xinhua news agency reported.

The Jiangsu regulation elaborated that teachers should help the schools map out incident management plans to cope with hazards like natural disasters, food poisoning and contagious disease breakout. Regular drills should also be carried out.

Meanwhile, the draft also puts limitations on parents. Those who don't discipline their children properly may have their guardianship revoked.

(CRI September 11, 2008)