Plan to Restrain Cram School Hours Backfires

By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter

The Lee Myung-bak administration's virtual declaration of a war against private cram schools, with a move to impose a 10 p.m. curfew on all hagwon, is drawing fierce protest from various interest groups.

Kwak Seung-jun, the head of Presidential Council for Future and Vision, announced an ambitious plan to ban private cram schools from running late into the night that has backfired. Hagwon, parents and education authorities, are calling it ``unrealistic.''

They claim the curfew might create another black market and pricier private tutoring, widening the gap between high and low income earners.

Kwak said Friday he would seek to legalize the plan with help from governing party lawmakers by this summer. He said he's ready to use the police force and all other administrative tools to implement the curfew.

Financial Burden

Kwak said that the planned restrictions on hagwon operations are in line with the government's Human New Deal Project, designed to help support the middle class, suffering from skyrocketing private education costs. Cutting these costs was one of the key election campaign pledges by President Lee.

According to the National Statistical Office, the private education market for elementary, middle and high school students here is valued at around 20 trillion won, with an average spending of 233,000 won per month on each student.

There are ordinances from local administrations banning excessive hagwon hours already ― Seoul has a 10 p.m. cap, while Gyeonggi Province set its own at 11 p.m. Still, the streets of large residential areas are filled with such institutes because they have no legally binding operating hours, observers said.

Public Education

Parents, however, have given the plan the cold shoulder. ``Rich people can still hire top private tutors and let their children study. But what about low incomers like us? We can't afford private tutoring _ it's far more expensive. It will worsen the social income gap,'' Lee, a mother of a middle school student in northern Seoul, said.

Most parents said what the government must target is not how long hawgwon operate, but how much they charge.

``The first thing that should come is not the restriction of opening hours but control of ever-soaring tuition fees,'' a homemaker, Han, a mother of two, said. ``We have to acknowledge that regular school classes can't cover everything necessary for university admission. Private education is a necessary evil,'' she said.

An industry insider said, ``The plan will create a black market in which tax evasion and other illegalities can take place.''

Even the education ministry is singing a different tune. A ministry official said, ``Defining such a sensitive issue needs much discussion and negotiations. We think that current local ordinances are enough at this point.''

Rep. Ahn Min-seok of the main opposition Democrats Party said, ``The curfew is just a makeshift step. Without normalization of the public education system, any measures are a band-aid solution.''

bjs@koreatimes.co.kr