Study On The Development Of Liability Insurance In Primary And Secondary Schools In China

In recent years, there have been an increasing number of school safety incidents, and there are complex and diversified causes in these incidents. The schools have to pay for compensation of the incidents arising of their right infringement, but there are many problems in the process of the compensation issues. First, how to determine whether is the responsibility of the school. There have been a large number of theory studies on this issue. The general rule is based on the principle of fault. The school must bear the statutory civil liability in the case of the responsibility. Second, where is the compensation fee from. The country grants the fund or the school collects money? And how to deal with the problem under the circumstance the school fails to afford the compensation fee? These problems led to increasing disputes between school and parents. The parents accused the school in court. The lack of timely and reasonable solution to these cases caused the student to suffer, the school to become helpless, the parents to get angry. This was not the unclearness of the responsibility of planning, nor was the shirking responsibility of the school, but because the school did not have enough financial resources to compensate. The funding for education in schools is limited. The funds allocated by the State are earmarked for official usage and can not be used for other purposes. The tuition paid by students must be turned over to the higher education sector. The schools don't have school-run enterprises and have no other economic sources. Therefore, in the need of substantial compensation in the event of safety incidents on campus, the schools become helpless and ask for money everywhere. They borrow money from the faculty or arrear the staff's wages. This seriously affects the educating and teaching activities in schools. To avoid the security problems of the students, many school quit the outside-campus activities and even some sports activities, which are not conducive to the holistic development of students. Campus safety then becomes a stumbling stone in the development of education in our country. Failure of properly handling could lead to social unrest and disturbance of people's livelihood, hence the introduction of school liability insurance. The insurance transfers risk through insurance mechanism. The school pays the insurance premiums and the insurer is responsible for the school's civil liability of the campus incidents causing for the school's negligence or fault. Liability insurance for school started in 2001 in Shanghai. For the ten-year development, it has been playing a role and has achieved some success in the field of education. Because it is still in its infancy, there are still many deficiencies; the theoretical research is not enough; there are also many loopholes in practical operation. Without the regulation of the specialized laws, the nature of school liability insurance is ambiguous. The provisions and the terms of the insurance companies vary widely. There are many contradictions. Due to the lack of experience, there are many shortcomings and even illegal behavior in the process of actual implementation in different provinces and cities. The school liability insurance does not play its due role.Starting with theoretical and practical research, in this thesis, the author tries to study the current problems in the development of school liability insurance in our country and express the personal opinion. The author also introduces some mature experiences of school liability insurance in the foreign countries and offers some we can learn from. The author also put forward the countermeasures for the better development of school liability insurance. Apart from the preamble and the conclusion, there are four parts in this paper.The first part is to introduce what is school liability insurance. It is a kind of insurance that, in the school education and teaching activities, including curricular and extracurricular activities organized by school, there are student safety incidents because of the school's negligence or fault, then the insurance shall bear the responsibility of civil liability for the school's violation. The subject of the insurance is the school's civil liability and the insured is the school. The author makes a comparison of school liability insurance and other kinds of Public Liability Insurance. The characteristic of school liability insurance is that it belongs to the scope of liability insurance. And then, the author introduces the current development status of the school liability insurance in China, taking some regions as example to illustrate the legislation and actual development. The second part is to introduce the necessity and significance of implementing the school liability insurance. The implementation of the school liability insurance is needed because of the frequent safety accidents in China, the limit compensation capacity of the school as well as the responsibility of students'protection. The significance of the insurance mainly focuses on the perspective of relieving school's pressure from compensation, urging the school to do safety well, protecting the school's reputation and to promote the students' overall development to indicate the great significance of implementing the school liability insurance.The third part is to talk about the current problems of the development of the school liability insurance in our country. First, the regulations and the laws are incomplete. There is no special law about the school liability insurance in China. Second, the types of the present school liability insurance are too simple and there is no combination insurance product. It can not meet the needs of the schools. And in existing products, there are many defects in the insurance policy, such as dispute of the accountability principle and contradictory situation. Finally, the author points out the existing loophole in the actual operation, for example, illegal fees, less insurance rate, complexity of claims and high fees.The fourth part is to introduce the mature experience of the development of school liability insurance in foreign countries, such as the United States, Canada, and Japan. The author gives details of school liability insurance in these countries and indicates their respective advantages. The author also provides some good points that our country can learn from. For example, legislation improvement, socialization of compensation of school liability, betterment of claims procedures of incident reporting, adoption of the form of mutual insurance in insurance organization and so on.The last part is to put forward suggestions of improving the recommendations of school liability insurance and to propose countermeasures to these existing problems, such as legislation improvement, terms modification, widening the premium source and enrichment of the types of school liability insurance, etc.The innovation of this paper is that the author studies the current existing problems of school liability insurance in our countries from the perspective of practice and does secondary analysis of the first-hand data from some insurance companies, then raises the current problems, such as high fees, collection of money from students, etc. At last, the author provides proposals of solution.