Parents seek after-school care. Will longer hours for elementary students work?

Park Sun-yun, an elementary school teacher in Anyang, Gyeonggi, spent a year caring for nearly 30 first-grade students who would frequently get homesick, call for their mothers and struggle to sit properly during classes.

“That first March was just utter chaos,” Park told the Korea JoongAng Daily on Friday, referring to the start of the new school year in Korea.

It’s common among teachers to say they “live with bladder infections,” especially among the lower grades. It’s partly a joke, but in Park’s case, it was a reality. She had repeatedly put off bathroom breaks while constantly tending to her young students, who are far more dependent on the teacher’s attention than their older counterparts, and are still learning to control emotions and pay attention in class.

While the typical school day ends at 1 p.m. for first- and second-grade elementary school students, many teachers find the hours challenging as is.

This comes as the government seeks to mandatorily extend regular school hours for them until 3 p.m., though it has yet to lay out specific details on how both teachers and students would adjust to the changes.

Park is among the overwhelming majority of teachers who are opposed to keeping young students at school later. A recent survey by the Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union (KTU) found that about 99 percent of 22,768 elementary school teacher respondents disapproved of the idea.

But the proposal hasn’t been embraced by parents, children and other educators either.

With the number of dual-income families continuing to grow, Korea has been grappling with a shortage of after-school care for children. Experts have pointed out the gap in care as one of several factors contributing to the country’s exceptionally low fertility rate, which has remained below one birth per woman since 2018.

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The child care dilemma

In Korea, most elementary school students begin school at 9 a.m., with first- and second-graders ending at around 1 p.m., as opposed to students in higher grades ending at around 3 or 4 p.m.

While the exact origins aren’t clear, the practice may have roots in Korean schools’ past double- and triple-shift system, according to Park Nam-gi, a professor emeritus at Gwangju National University of Education. In the 1970s and ‘80s, schools were overcrowded with children of Korea's baby boom generation, prompting many to adopt multiple shifts, meaning that the first shift would end early in the day.

Because the regular school day ends so early for first- and second-graders, many working parents opt to send their children to hagwon (cram schools) or hire babysitters at home. In more severe scenarios, some may consider sacrificing their work.

“I’ve seen so many friends consider giving up the jobs they worked so hard to land when their children were about to start elementary school, because they had no one else to care for them,” Park, the teacher, said.

One government response to address the after-school care gap has been the Neulbom School policy, which offers numerous child care options, such as conventional after-school classes focused on additional lessons or simply free supervision until as late as 8 p.m.

However, not all parents have been able to access that late supervision option, called the Education Dolbom program. One working mother surnamed Kang, who lives in Suwon, Gyeonggi, recalled that her child failed to receive the benefit due to strong demand for the service and its random selection process.

“We didn’t get into the program through the lottery, so we had no choice but to send our child to several private institutions because there was no one else to look after our child after school,” Kang told the Korea JoongAng Daily.

“Hagwon fees are costly, and it wasn’t easy coordinating school and academy schedules. My child would be exhausted after moving from one academy to another all the time.”

A decade of debate

The debate has been ongoing for nearly a decade.

Since 2018, similar versions of the idea have repeatedly resurfaced in an attempt to address the shortages of after-school care for young students with working parents, as well as reduce reliance on private education. However, the proposals were overturned multiple times.

The Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy first pitched the idea of keeping first- and second-grade students at school until around 3 p.m. by adding more time for play and rest.

The proposal immediately faced backlash from teachers, who cited work burdens and that it would place emotional and physical stress on students, causing then-Minister of Education Yoo Eun-hae to retract the plan and pledge to conduct further consultation with schools.

The Yoon Suk Yeol administration later introduced the Neulbom School in 2023. The policy was piloted at 214 schools in five regions that year and expanded to all elementary schools nationwide in the second half of 2024.

As of March 2025, there were about 513,000 first- and second-grade participants, accounting for roughly 77 percent of the entire demographic, according to data from the Ministry of Education.

In a 2024 survey also by the ministry, answered by 2,580 parents at 258 schools, 85.7 percent said they were satisfied with the program and 72.9 percent said it helped reduce private education costs or time.

The idea to mandate young elementary school students’ dismissal time to 3 p.m. resurfaced as a national policy agenda earlier this month, when the National Education Commission began discussing longer instructional hours for first- and second-grade students. Unlike the 2018 proposal, which proposed extending the school day through play and rest, the latest debate shifts its focus on expanding instructional lessons.

So far, the plan has been met with fierce backlash among the public — including, of course, the children themselves. A recent survey conducted by the Elementary School Teachers Union found that 65.5 percent of first- and second-grade student respondents said staying in school until 3 p.m. would be exhausting.

Why longer hours may backfire

Educators and parents who spoke to the Korea JoongAng Daily pointed out that the shortage of after-school care for younger elementary school students with working parents needs to be addressed.

They were doubtful, however, whether mandating an extension of regular class hours would be the ideal solution.

Hyun Kyung-hee, a spokesperson for the KTU and a high school teacher, said the mandate would be “child abuse.”

“Schools aren’t designed for young children to stay in for long hours,” Hyun said, explaining that, from a developmental perspective, even staying at school from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. can be difficult for young students because elementary school classrooms differ from those in preschool and kindergarten.

Teachers’ increased workload would also be an issue. Ending classes early doesn’t mean an early end to the teachers’ workday, both Hyun and Prof. Park said, as schools tend to assign other duties, including administrative tasks, to lower-grade teachers.

As additional investment and hiring would be required to extend class hours, teachers’ work structures would need to be overhauled, they said.

“People may think that teachers are against the proposal because they do not want to work more,” Park, the teacher, said. “That’s not the case.”

Adding new duties for teachers without reforming the current education system, she said, would mean that something else has to be sacrificed, potentially including the time and effort teachers should spend preparing for their lessons.

“Ultimately, that could affect the quality of education students receive,” she said.

“The National Education Commission was irresponsible when it brought up the idea,” Prof. Park said. “They should have come up with a plan on how to acquire more funding and how to increase staffing, but none of that was prepared in advance. No wonder teachers are furious.”

Another mother of two young children, surnamed Lee, who lives in Yeongdeungpo District, western Seoul, was adamantly opposed to extending class periods.

“It’s hard enough for young children to focus in school under the current schedule,” Lee said. “Simply adding more lessons won’t be effective at all.”

Rethinking after-school care

If school hour extensions were to be mandated, Kang, the mother, suggested reading and activities related to the arts or physical education. Prof. Park proposed addressing the fatigue that young students can experience at school, and that they should be given sufficient hours to rest and play, not undergo textbook-centered lessons.

“Since the question we need to focus on is whether children can really endure staying in the classroom until 3 p.m., creating nap rooms, like kindergartens, might help,” he said.

Instead of forcing schools to bear the pressure, Prof. Park recommended establishing a separate institute that specializes in after-school child supervision.

“If a properly organized institution were to take over after regular school ends, with its own principal and system, school teachers would have little reason to oppose it,” he said.

Experts have also cited Germany’s Ganztagsschule, or all-day school, system as an exemplary model. Students are allowed to voluntarily stay at school through the afternoon, with schools combining academic instruction with providing meals, extracurricular activities and supervised care rather than simply adding regular lessons throughout the day.

If Korea were to adopt a similar system, it would have to restructure the entire school system — staffing, investment and redistribution of work.

The larger question, however, is whether dismissing school later in the day will help tackle Korea’s low birthrate. Hyun is skeptical.

“The government’s policies are moving in a direction that sends the message, ‘We’ll take care of your children while you go out and work,’” she said. “The ideal scenario should be making it easier for working parents to spend more time with their children instead, especially when they are younger.”

BY SHIN MIN-HEE, SHIN WOO-JIN [[email protected]]