More Than Half of High Schools Are Running `Early-Morning Class`

More than half of the academic high schools are running early-morning classes, which begin before 7:30 a.m.

The Korean Teachers` Union (KTU) announced yesterday that, “We recently surveyed 74 academic high schools in 6 major cities, Chungnam, and Kangwon about the early-morning classes. The survey shows that students of the 40 schools (54 percent) are having the early-morning classes, under which students have to arrive at school before 7:30 a.m.”

Among the 74 schools, 24 schools (32.5 percent) regulate the time students have to come to school by 8 a.m., and 10 schools (13.5 percent) regulate it by 8:30 a.m.

During the early-morning classes, 41 schools are conducting complementary classes or special education sessions, and the others are using the time for self-study or educational video watching.

59 schools (79.9 percent) are implementing night self-study periods later than 9 p.m. Among them, 7 schools are running night time complementary classes.

An official of the KTU insisted that, “According to a survey of high school students in last Oct., the average sleeping hours of the high schools seniors were only 5 hours and 27 minutes. The government should immediately prohibit the early-morning classes and should put its efforts to normalize the school education.”

Yong Park parky@donga.com