Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Teachers, parents disagree over gov't leaving quarantine management up to schools
Students head to schools in Seoul in this Dec. 20, 2021 photo. Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Teachers and parents are showing mixed responses to the education ministry's new guidelines. The new guidelines leave the decision of whether to hold in-person or online classes for the spring semester up to the school.
Teachers' unions are criticizing the government for passing the responsibility for quarantine policy on to the schools, while parents are claiming that academic achievement differences should not widen further despite their concerns over the easing of measures to control the spread of COVID-19.
Under the new guidelines, schools can change their attendance policy for the new semester depending on the number of infections among their students. To structure these decisions, the ministry suggested a new four-stage system for schools to respond to the virus situation individually, in order to minimize uncertainty among parents and teachers.
At levels 1 and 2, schools will run in-person classes, though extracurricular activities will be restricted under level 2. Under level 3, classes will be run in a hybrid manner with both online and in-person classes, while under level 4, all schools will go to online classes only.
The ministry also suggested a standard for determining whether schools should shift to online classes: if the number of daily infections at a particular school surpasses 3 percent of the total school population, or if the number of those who are in self-quarantine surpasses 15 percent of the school population, then the school should be allowed to implement level 2 measures; and if a school reaches both criteria, then level 3 should then be implemented.
Much of the work to decide quarantine policy is thus being left up to schools and parents. In addition, when an infected person is detected in a school, contact tracing must be conducted by that school's teachers or staff.
Among those who had close contact with the infected person, those who show symptoms can get a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, but only with written permission from the school principal.
Asymptomatic students will be individually tested with rapid antigen tests three or more times over seven days, and can return to school once they test negative.
When the new policy was announced, teachers' groups criticized the government for leaving the work of managing quarantine policy and COVID-19 cases on the shoulders of school teachers alone.
The Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations (KFTA) issued a statement, saying, “The Ministry of Education is trying to impose excessive tasks and responsibilities for managing COVID-19 on the schools, making it difficult for teachers to engage in education.”
“Teachers cannot be in charge of contact tracing and managing rapid antigen testing for students while they are teaching. If such excessive quarantine management work and responsibilities are imposed on them, neither the recovery of the educational gap, nor the quarantine management that collapsed due to the ongoing pandemic will be achieved properly,” the KFTA said.
The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union also said, “Quarantine management work is a system that should be supported by the regional education offices and the public health authorities, while schools should more focus on education.”
However, parents agreed that the learning gap between children should not prolonged, while expressing concerns over the relaxed quarantine guidelines.
Park Chul-hong, who has a third-grade elementary school child in Seoul, said, “For the last two years, public education didn't take care of children in terms of education. I wonder how long it will take for children to attend classes properly.”
“We all don't know when the pandemic will end, but I don't think all schools should have to shift to online classes just because one or two cases are detected. Schools and teachers should change in order to flexibly respond to the virus situation,” Park said.