Tokyo’s Board of Education has drafted guidelines aimed at protecting its teachers from irrational requests and abusive behavior from parents, from limiting the duration of meetings to having a lawyer handle complaints.

The measures come as teachers struggle to deal with the burden of parents who make irrational complaints that go beyond what is considered socially acceptable, often referred to as “monster parents,” which is overwhelming their workload.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education’s new guidelines, released last Thursday, include measures such as limiting the length of meetings between teachers and parents to 30 minutes on weekdays, or up to an hour under certain circumstances. The board notes that lengthy meetings can disrupt the day-to-day work that teachers must complete.

Such meetings will be conducted with at least two teachers present to “ensure that calm and constructive communications are conducted” among the two parties. For parents that continue to request meetings repeatedly, teachers in managerial positions — such as the vice principal — will deal with the matter in the third meeting and thereafter.

A fourth meeting would involve experts such as lawyers and psychologists. From the fifth meeting and in any subsequent meetings, a lawyer would act as the school’s sole representative in the meeting and would primarily deal with the situation from a legal standpoint.

It would be mandatory to record all meetings.

The education board plans to solidify the guidelines before the end of the year and implement them in fiscal 2026, which starts next April. The guidelines are intended for schools operated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, but they will be shared with boards of education in its municipalities to support their use at more schools.

Discussions on such guidelines began earlier this year, in May, following the launch of measures in Tokyo to prevent customer harassment that aim to protect workers from aggressive behaviors and unreasonable demands from customers.

That move prompted recognition of the need for similar protocols in the education sector.

According to a survey conducted in April that sought responses from around 12,000 public school teachers in Tokyo, 22% of respondents said that they received treatment from those outside of the school — mostly parents — that they felt “was socially questionable.”

The most common behaviors included prolonged engagements in the form of lengthy phone calls from parents, as well as verbal abuse and irrational requests. Many of the cases involved bullying and students refusing to go to school, or teachers scolding and disciplining students. Respondents most frequently cited their workloads being overwhelmed as a result, forcing them to work overtime more frequently.

In fact, a recent white paper on death by overwork (karōshi) showed that for three consecutive years since 2022, the education sector recorded the third-highest percentage of staff who worked over 60 hours a week in Japan, below only the transportation and delivery industry and the hotel and restaurant industry.