By Kim Rahn
Oddly it’s hard for a toddler to be enrolled in a kindergarten here despite the nation having the world’s lowest birthrate. This year, it’s even harder, if not impossible, for those born in 2007 to gain admission.
Yeon-seo is one of some 493,000 children born that year, a year believed to be the auspicious “Year of the Golden Pig” which comes every 600 years.
Her mom, a blogger, found out Yeon-seo failed to win a lottery for admission to a public institute earlier this month.
“The competition was not relatively fierce as it was just 2.4 times oversubscribed, so I thought she had a chance. But she wasn’t selected. I had to find another preschool,” said the blogger with the nickname Yeonseo-mom.
It was predicted that babies born that year would have comfortable, affluent lives and there was also a childbirth boom, with the number of babies born in 2007 being about 10 percent higher than in 2005 and 2006, according to Statistics Korea.
The birth boom was good news at the time for the country with a severely decreasing birthrate. However, there were also concerns that the “golden pig” children could be doomed to face higher-than-usual competition with their peers in college entrance exams or job hunting ― and the signs have already emerged beginning with kindergarten entry.
Yeonseo-mom then searched for another kindergarten. She found a private one, which was a little further away from home, but there were not many options.
“Even at the preschool, I could consult with the principal about admission only after obtaining a letter of reference from a mother of a child who was already attending the kindergarten,” she said.
Yeon-seo’s case is not the worst: for some preschools renowned for good facilities and programs, parents queue up in front of the kindergartens overnight when admission is made on a first-come-first-served basis.
The head of the Korean Association of Public Kindergarten Teachers said both public and private preschools are receiving a flood of consultation calls from parents regarding admissions.
“The admission season differs according to region and according to whether they are public or private. In the Chungcheong region, private kindergartens start the admission process earlier than public ones but parents usually apply for private ones later after their children fail to get admitted to public ones. But this year, applications for private kindergartens have already met the quota,” association chief Jeon Ho-sook said.
The association’s Seoul branch head, Shin Sang-in, also said preschool teachers are busy answering calls from parents inquiring about admissions.
“If each kindergarten accepts admissions on a first-come-first-served basis, it can cause chaos among parents. So, all Seoul’s public and private preschools will start receiving applications on Dec. 1 and hold lotteries on Dec. 12,” Shin said.
“Although the number of children of preschool age is larger than in previous years, we can’t increase the quota on our own as the quota for public kindergartens is set by the education authorities. So each preschool has a long waiting list,” she said.