The "hourly child care" service, where parents can temporarily leave their child, is being improved. Until now, one teacher cared for three children, but starting in Mar., one teacher will care for only two children. Same-day reservation hours will also be extended by two hours, from noon to 2 p.m.
The Ministry of Education said on the 24th that it will supplement the system to improve the quality of hourly child care services for parents raising children at home and to make them more convenient to use.
Hourly child care is a service that parents who do not use daycare centers and care for infants aged 6 to 36 months at home can use by the hour when they need temporary care due to hospital visits, job preparation, or short-term work. The fee is 5,000 won per hour, but for infants raised at home, up to 60 hours per month are subsidized by the government, so parents pay only 2,000 won.
According to the Ministry of Education, of the 1,224 independent classes scheduled to operate this year, 64.4% (788) will run with a teacher-to-child ratio of 1 to 2. The government plans to improve the ratio for all independent classes to 1 to 2 by 2028.
To meet urgent child care demand, the same-day reservation deadline for independent classes will also be pushed back. Previously, reservations were possible until noon, but going forward, applications will be accepted until 2 p.m.
A simultaneous reservation feature for multi-child families will also be introduced. Until now, parents had to book for each child separately, which sometimes resulted in only some children being reserved or having to send children to different institutions because there were no slots at the same institution.
The Ministry of Education said it will produce and distribute on-site a "guide to hourly child care" and a "parent user guide (guidebook)" to make hourly child care services easier to use.