Stepparents get student record rights

An elementary school class in Seoul. / Korea Times file

By Kim Bo-eun

Stepparents will be able to put their names on their children’s records at elementary, middle and high schools, starting this year.

The Ministry of Education said Thursday it had told city and provincial education offices it had made the change to protect students’ rights.

Remarried people will be able to put their names on the student records of their spouse’s children, and students will be able to put the names of the parents they live with on the forms.

Students whose parents have divorced can delete or choose not to fill in the names of the parent they do not live with.

Personal information on student records are now based on resident registration, which shows family members that live together.

The Anti-corruption and Civil Rights Commission raised the issue last year, saying that students’ and parents’ rights were infringed because the student record form did not consider families with single parents and those where parents had remarried.

Single-parent households and remarried households are on the rise.

Data from Statistics Korea shows 48,900 men (15.2 percent) remarried in 2013. The figure for women was 54,300, or 16.8 percent.

There were 1.68 million single-parent households in 2012, 9.3 percent of total households.