First-graders at Ahyeon Elementary School in Seoul kick a ball with their instructor during a soccer class at the beginning of the school year last month. By Kwon Do-hyun

The government has been struggling to install Neulbom School, which it began last month, but it has been confirmed that the difficulty of finding after-school instructors in charge of the program continues as they have been treated poorly. The after-school instructors are demanding improvements in lower tuition fees and short contract periods.

According to the results of the report on April 2, the biggest difficulty for many elementary schools that run the system of Neulbom School is to hire instructors. Last month, the elementary schools that run the program suggested to the offices of education to increase the allowance for tutors and consider using school volunteers as tutors for the program.

The main reason for the shortage of tutors seems to be low pay. While existing after-school programs pay tutors “per person” based on the number of students, Neulbom School pays tutors “per hour” based on the number of class hours. The more students a tutor has taught, the more the tutor's pay decreases under the new program. "In some cases, instructors who used to receive 500,000 to 600,000 won a week were paid around 300,000 won, which is about half of what they used to receive under the new system," said Woo Jung-sook, an after-school clay and craft instructor at an elementary school.

Instructors’ pay also varies by region. The Ministry of Education suggested 40,000 won per hour as a standard, while Daegu and other cities pay 35,000 won per hour to them. The Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, which was facing a severe shortage of Instructors, has belatedly raised their pay from 60,000 won to 80,000 won per hour.

There is also a limit to the number of hours the instructors can teach to maintain their income. Not only because the classes are held only after school, but also because each office of education limits the number of hours an individual tutor can teach per week to 15 hours. An official from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said, "If an instructor teaches more than 15 hours a week, there may be issues such as the payment of weekly holiday allowances or the possibility of switching to indefinite contract workers, so we inevitably set limits."

Recently, there have also been cases in which consignment companies sign contracts with Neulbom School instructors. Ahn Mi-yeon, an art instructor, said, "As it has become difficult to find instructors, schools are contracting with consignment companies to deal with the imbalance of the supply and demand of instructors.” Instructors belonging to the consignment companies have to pay about 20 percent of their pay to the companies, so their pay will be reduced further.

Another concern is that the instructors’ contract period is less than a month, or it is often irregular. Since the start of the Neulbom School program, some elementary schools have made the contract period for after-school tutors three weeks. Currently, the length of contracts for the tutors varies widely from 3 to 12 months. Although they were given advance notice, some tutors were unable to renew their contracts after three weeks due to various reasons, including program adjustments and the introduction of consignment companies. An official from an office of education said, "There are some inevitable short-term contracts because it was the adjustment period for new students.”

The government expects the expansion of Neulbom School to ease the childcare and financial burden on parents.

However, it has been pointed out that maintaining the new after-school system based on the poor treatment of the tutors is not only undesirable but does not fit the purpose of its introduction.

If the treatment of after-school tutors are not improved and the shortage of them intensifies, the quality of the program will decrease and students may shift to the private education market instead of schools, which conflicts with the purpose of Neulbom School to reduce the burden of private education costs.