BEIJING • Teachers in China will not be allowed to use the WeChat and QQ messaging apps to assign homework or ask parents to grade students' homework, the Ministry of Education said.

In a recent response to a proposal made at the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the ministry said it is the teachers' responsibility to grade students' homework and not the parents.

The ministry and seven other government departments issued a guideline last August to protect students' eyesight by curtailing the use of electronic devices to assign homework. Teachers should assign homework on paper only and limit the time they use electronic devices to teach, the guideline said.

But many schools rely heavily on WeChat groups and other mobile phone apps to give assignments. The practice poses a challenge to the country's goal of protecting children's eyesight and feeds parents' worries about their children becoming addicted to cellphones and the Internet.

Liu Yanming, a sixth-grade student in Shanghai, uses his mother's cellphone to complete his homework, which is assigned on a piece of paper by his teacher. The completed assignment is then photographed and posted to a parent-teacher group on WeChat.

His father, Mr Liu Yong, is not pleased about this practice, saying: "He is just 12 years old and I do not want to buy him a cellphone. But it has become inevitable."

Senior researcher Chu Zhaohui from the National Institute of Education Sciences said that although it is impossible to ban the use of electronic devices in the Internet era, students must be able to complete their homework without using them, so that those who cannot afford tablets, computers or smartphones can also do their work.

CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK