'Are you free on this date?' — School violence investigators assigned by availability, not expertise

"The district education office contacts us asking something like, 'Are you available on such-and-such date?' — in many cases they are just looking for whoever can show up at that time, rather than checking for expertise."

A person identified only as A, who worked as a dedicated school violence investigator at a Seoul district education office, described the current assignment system this way. "School violence investigations are not work that should be handed to just anyone, yet the gap in capability among actual investigators is considerable," A said. "The process and outcome of an investigation change depending on which investigator is assigned."

The dedicated school violence investigator regime was introduced in 2024 with the stated aim of reducing teachers' administrative burden in handling school violence cases and improving the fairness and professionalism of investigations. About 1,000 dedicated investigators are currently active nationwide, appointed on initial or renewed commissions. In practice, however, voices from the field say the system has gaps — particularly around differences in investigator capability, assignment methods, the brevity of investigator training, and the absence of robust conflict-of-interest safeguards.

According to the Ministry of Education's 2026 School Violence Case-Handling Guidebook, dedicated investigators may be drawn from retired teachers or police officers with experience in school violence or student guidance, specialists in youth counseling and protection, and those with prior case investigation experience. When a school violence complaint is filed, the investigator interviews the students involved — both the alleged victim and alleged perpetrator — along with their guardians and teachers, establishes the facts, and prepares an investigation report that forms the basis for the School Violence Deliberation Committee's ruling.

The final decision rests with the deliberation committee, but the dedicated investigator is the first to systematically organize the conflicting statements and evidence from both sides. Which statements are followed up on, and how contradictory claims are laid out in the investigation report, become an important foundation for the committee's subsequent judgment.

The problem, according to people in the field, is that availability — not the complexity of a case or an investigator's area of expertise — tends to come first in the assignment process.

A dedicated investigator in Gyeonggi Province said the process works not through a group chat soliciting volunteers, but through a staff member sending a text message to check whether a specific date and time works. "In practice, the structure requires that schedules align before anything else — before the difficulty of the case or the investigator's specialty," the investigator said.

Because dedicated investigators come from widely varying professional backgrounds, there are significant differences in their investigation experience, ability to interview students, and skill in writing investigation reports. Minimum qualification requirements exist, but retired teachers, police officers, and counseling specialists each bring different career paths and areas of expertise — making it unrealistic to assume they all possess equal competence in investigating school violence cases.

A teacher who said she has handled school violence cases for three years acknowledged that the capability gap among investigators is real, given the diverse backgrounds they bring. "District education offices do provide additional training, but beyond that, there is an element of luck depending on which investigator you get," she said.

School violence cases also vary considerably by type, each requiring a different investigative approach. Cases range from group violence involving complex, conflicting accounts from multiple students, to cyberbullying carried out through group chats or SNS, to incidents involving students with disabilities or immigrant backgrounds — and that diversity makes it important to assign investigators based on their relevant experience and expertise.

Education authorities maintain, however, that scheduling is not the sole basis for assignment. A Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education official said the office considers not only an investigator's availability but also their past career, the type of case, and the gender of the students involved. "It is not a system where we simply send whoever has time," the official said. On field-level criticism that some district offices prioritize scheduling over expertise, the official said it would be necessary to verify whether such cases actually occur, adding that if confirmed, staff guidance through training would be needed.

In smaller communities, the potential for conflicts of interest between investigators and the parties to a case is cited as another problem. In areas with small populations and tight-knit social networks, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that an investigator may already have a personal relationship with the guardians of the students involved.

An official at a South Chungcheong Province district education office said that in areas with small populations, a person who is an acquaintance in everyday life may one day find themselves facing a student's parent in the formal roles of investigator and guardian. "We need to think carefully about how to ensure the fairness of an investigation in that kind of situation," the official said.

District education offices do allow the parties — whether on the alleged victim's or alleged perpetrator's side — to file a recusal request, which would result in a different investigator being assigned. But if the parties are unaware of a personal connection between the investigator and the other side, filing such a request in the first place is difficult. It is also practically impossible for education offices to identify in advance every personal relationship between investigators and parents in their communities.

The South Jeolla Province Office of Education similarly said that while it verifies qualifications and expertise at the appointment stage and provides training after selection, there are limits to confirming all personal ties within a local community. When a conflict of interest is identified, the investigator must step aside — but beyond administrative vetting, it is equally important that investigators themselves disclose relevant relationships and recuse themselves voluntarily.

The Ministry of Education guidebook instructs parties with concerns or complaints about an investigator to notify the relevant district education office staff. However, the specific scope of what relationships must be disclosed and what connections qualify as grounds for recusal or disqualification may vary by region.

Given the wide variation in investigators' backgrounds and experience, managing the investigator pool and reducing disparities in investigation quality have emerged as pressing challenges for education authorities.

In Seoul, each of the 11 district education offices provides supplementary training. According to the Seoul Dongbu District Office of Education, district-level capacity-building sessions typically run two to three hours and focus on operational manuals and similar materials. Investigators who show a need for improvement in report writing or case handling during actual work receive separate individual consultations.

A district education office official said there are differences among investigators in how they write reports and how they approach and handle cases. "When areas needing improvement are identified during actual work, we provide individual guidance on an ongoing basis," the official said.

Voices from the field also called for going beyond one-off training sessions and ad hoc individual feedback — arguing that a systematic approach is needed to continuously evaluate actual investigation outputs and feed the results back into retraining and future case assignments.

An education sector official noted that while the introduction of dedicated investigators has reduced the burden on teachers who previously had to interview students directly, it has not eliminated schools' involvement in school violence cases altogether. "Initial responses to parents after a report is filed, separating the students involved, student guidance, and follow-up work such as relationship restoration — all of that still falls to the school," the official said.

The official added that for the dedicated investigator regime to take root, it cannot simply be a matter of shifting investigative work from teachers to outside parties. "The system needs to assign investigators suited to the nature of each case, screen for potential conflicts of interest at the assignment stage, and then evaluate the quality of investigation outputs afterward — feeding those assessments back into retraining and reappointment decisions," the official said.