Student attendance at schools in North Hamgyong Province since the beginning of the school year on Mar. 1 has been so poor that the province’s department of education recently launched a fact-finding survey, Daily NK has learned.
“The provincial party committee has been informed of the fact that the province’s elementary, middle and high schools, as well as its vocational schools and universities, have failed to keep up student attendance rates since the school year began on Mar. 1,” a source in the province told Daily NK on Mar. 14. “That has led the provincial department of education to launch a fact-finding survey, focusing on the remote schools that are reporting the lowest attendance.”
According to the source, the provincial department of education first analyzed school enrollment, academic records, and attendance records submitted by those various schools and then sent officials to the schools in rural and mountainous areas where the problem is the most severe to personally verify student attendance rates.
In previous surveys, officials had assessed the situation by meeting with school principals and homeroom teachers. But for this survey, the provincial department of education had officials meet separately with students and parents with a low attendance rate to determine exactly what is happening and to report their findings to the provincial party committee, the source told Daily NK.
“During the three days from Mar. 2 to Mar. 4, investigating officials verified the accuracy of the figures on the comprehensive report on provincial student attendance that had been submitted to the provincial party committee. They have confirmed that more than 30% of students are not attending classes,” the source said.
North Koreans have been suffering economic difficulties because the country’s borders have long been closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and more families have been going hungry amid the shortage of food. Under those circumstances, the source explained, parents have been too exhausted to rouse weary children and pack them off to school.
The teachers who are supposed to maintain a certain level of student attendance do pay home visits to absentee students. But when teachers see their living conditions, they cannot bring themselves to do more than gently admonish parents to send their children to school, the source related.
Another issue raised by the fact-finding survey is that students in impoverished families are psychologically dejected and reluctant to attend school.
The survey found that there is no solidarity between students who are better off and those who are not and that students who are worse off have trouble standing tall, as if they were guilty of wrongdoing, the source explained.
“After being briefed on the situation, the provincial party committee has been exploring what measures can be taken to tackle the severe situation, in recognition that they are seeing a repeat of the ‘Arduous March’ in the 1990s, when children scraped by without any hopes or dreams,” the source said.
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