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| A classroom at Semyeong Elementary School in Seoul is empty, Sunday. / Yonhap |
The Ministry of Education is under mounting pressure to postpone school openings until the beginning of April because new cases of coronavirus infections are still occurring.
The schools ― from kindergartens to universities ― are scheduled to open March 23.
The Korean Federation of Teachers' Association said over the weekend: "An additional school delay will be inevitable if group infections on a smaller scale continue. The educational authorities must be aware that schools are vulnerable to infection because young children spend hours together and eat together."
Parents' groups also called on the government to postpone the opening.
"With the given quarantine schedule, we can't protect children from the new coronavirus. The authorities should delay it again," a spokesman for one group said.
One parent filed a petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website making the same request and received the support of more than 90,000 people.
Daegu Metropolitan Education Office Superintendent Kang Wun-hee asked the education ministry last week to delay the school opening in his city.
The government said the matter was being discussed with no decision having been made so far.
"We're discussing the issue with the Ministry of Education and the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We'll try to decide as soon as possible," a health ministry official said during a press conference Sunday.
A further delay is likely to further disrupt the annual school year and will have other knock on effects.
Elementary, middle and high schools have a mandatory 190 school days per year, and an additional delay would mean reducing summer and winter vacation days to meet the requirement.
The delay is expected to complicate things the most for 12th graders who will be applying for universities later this year.
Mid-term exams are scheduled for the end of May for them. If they are delayed or cancelled, it will affect the annual academic performance evaluation that 12th graders need by the end of September to apply to universities.
The delay is also making life difficult for working parents who have had to find people to care for their young children at home.
Government measures to deal with this have left parents unimpressed.
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