Parents frightened again ahead of fall semester opening

Students maintain a distance from one another upon arriving at Jeil Middle School on Jeju Island, in this June 8 file photo. Yonhap

By Bahk Eun-ji

Many parents are becoming increasingly concerned over whether they should send their children back to school as scheduled for the upcoming fall semester, after the number of daily new COVID-19 infections hit three digits for the fifth straight day, Tuesday.

The recent rise in coronavirus cases, especially in the Seoul metropolitan area, has already signaled a rise in the risk to safety in schools, leading those considering larger onsite instruction in the fall semester to hurriedly adjust their opening schedules. But some parents are complaining that they have not been informed about scheduling changes at their children's schools.

The Ministry of Education announced, Sunday, a restriction on classroom capacity following a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases in the capital area. The number of students attending kindergartens and elementary and middle schools at one time should be kept to under one-third of the total student body for schools in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, lowered from an earlier guideline that limited them to two-thirds.

For schools in regions outside the metropolitan area, the education ministry strongly advised keeping the number of students at the two-thirds level, while ordering schools in regions with a large number of new infections to replace onsite classes with online ones.

Although these are the same restrictions as in the first semester, parents are complaining as the schedule is being readjusted right ahead of the start of the second semester. Some schools, set to open this week, have been experiencing similar confusion as in the first semester, during the early stages of the pandemic, regarding the schedule and method of students' classroom attendance.

“It was only a few days ago that I received a notice that my daughter's school was planning to conduct onsite classes every day from Aug. 24. If the schedule is adjusted, working parents like us will have to find someone to take care of children or send them to private institutes,” said Jo Eun-ha, a 41-year-old working mother who has an 8-year-old daughter attending elementary school in Seoul.

Some parents said, however, that it was better to increase the number of days of school, as many students have already been taking classes at private institutes. Parents of middle and high school students are also concerned about the education gap between the haves and have-nots in terms of access to private education.

“Students have already been divided into the top level who study without a shortage of private education and the bottom level whose grades continue to fall without anyone to take care of them,” said Lee Ji-whan, a 46-year-old father who has two sons attending middle school in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province.

“Shouldn't schools be more active in public education, when children are already attending private institutes, to bridge the education gap during the pandemic?"