IN SOUTH KOREA Spending big on enrichment to get kids ahead

Sarah Kim often finds herself torn between wanting to shield her only daughter from burnout and fearing that the 10-year-old could be left behind if she does not keep pace with South Korea’s hyper-competitive education culture.

- Wendy Teo

So while she fills her daughter Noh Seung-ah’s after-school hours with enrichment programmes, she deliberately chooses academies that assign little to no homework to avoid overburdening her child.

Kim and her husband, both office workers aged 46, currently spend about 1.5 million won (S$1,260) a month on English, mathematics, reading, in-line skating, sandplay therapy and art lessons. The aim is to help Seung-ah stay on top of the school curriculum while exposing her to a range of activities. Kim herself grew up outside Seoul without the pressures of intensive private education, which many parents believed even then would help their children get ahead.

“Perhaps my insistence on minimising homework is also a psychological defence mechanism - a way to ease the guilt that comes with sending my child from school straight into after-school programmes simply because I am a working mother,” she said.

For working parents such as Kim, private academies often double as childcare. In addition, Kim gives her mother a monthly stipend of one million won for caring for Seung-ah in the evenings before she and her husband return home from work. She considers herself lucky, as she says many families lack extended family support and have to pay for caregivers instead.