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A month into the start of the new school term, drama and conflict have been escalating in parent-teacher WeChat groups in China, a popular way to boost communication between parents and teachers.
According to one online post that went viral on Chinese social media this month, a math teacher in a primary school in Jinggangshan, Jiangxi Province shamed parents who forgot to check and sign their children's homework in the teacher-parent WeChat groups by asking, "Is it because you can't do second-grade mental calculation? Or did you earn millions last night?" 
"You can't even supervise your own child, [your child] will be as pathetic as you are," the teacher wrote, according to screenshots circulating on the Internet.
The screenshots soon sparked anger among netizens toward the teacher, and the headmaster of the school, who verified the incident, apologized to the parents involved.
In another screenshot that went viral, a parent asked the teacher at midnight whether she had gone to sleep. After the teacher said that she was in bed, the parent said, "You have gone to bed, but my daughter hasn't. You give them so much homework, how come you can go to sleep and my child can't sleep at midnight?"
While it was the teachers that were under fire in these cases, parents are also blamed.
Mr Wang, the father of a fifth-grade girl in Putuo district, Shanghai, said while WeChat groups are a convenient way to learn about his child's school work, he is also bothered by the unnecessary messages that sometimes flood the groups.
"When a teacher sends an announcement in the chat group, parents will thank the teacher one by one and say what a good job the teacher has done. For me this is a little bit over the top, after all it was the teacher's job to send the announcement," he told the Global Times.
Some sycophant parents even wrote poems to the teacher in the WeChat groups, according to Western China Metropolis Daily.
Xiong Bingqi, deputy head of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said parent-teacher WeChat groups are an innovative method in the internet age to manage classroom and boost communication between parents and the school. However, online channels cannot necessarily solve offline problems, such as the peer pressure faced by parents and the relatively lower status of parents compared with the school.
"The only way to bring calm back to these groups is to set up rules, and allow these groups play the role they should originally play," he told the Global Times.
Local education authorities and schools have been rolling out methods to put these WeChat groups under control.
On October 15, the education bureau of Chengxi district, Xi'ning, Qinghai Province rolled out 10 rules - five do's and five don'ts - on online groups between school and parents. 
According to the five don'ts, homework and students' scores and rankings should not be shared in the groups, and teachers should refrain from praising or criticizing students; announcements should be sent during work hours; parents do not need to reply or "like" these announcements.
Officials from Chengxi district's education bureau told Xinhua that they rolled out the measure after receiving complaints from parents, who said their children's scores were shared in the chat groups.
Similar rules were also introduced in many primary schools and middle schools across China. Hangzhou's Wenhui Middle School, for example, announced rules that only one WeChat group can be established for each class, and the purpose of the group should be limited to sending important announcements. Teachers are encouraged to call or visit parents separately when needed.