InsideJapan News Network

Teachers in Tokyo, Japan have been given a new handbook to help them cope with demanding mums and dads dubbed "monster parents".

The Tokyo city government is to hand out a set of guidelines aimed at helping the city's educators deal with these parents, who according to local reports, ask their children's teachers to bring youngsters home, sort out their school lunch and reprint school yearbooks so that they contain more pictures of their beloved offspring.

According to a report in the Telegraph, Japanese government figures show that these incidents - which could be quite amusing on the surface - may be making life as a Tokyo teacher extremely hard.

Government figures show that 63 per cent of all sick leave taken by teachers in Japan is down to stress.

Education academic Naoki Ogi explained: "Customers are god at department stores with buyers having absolute superiority over sellers. And (in schools) parents are the buyers."

Written by Mark Smith.