Schools and district education authorities are suffering a headache over the “millennium babies” born in a 2000 mini-boom, who are due to start elementary school next year. An official with the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said on Thursday, "The number of students entering elementary school has been on the decline due to the decreasing birthrate, but now a number of schools see a surge in new students.” Competition is especially fierce in areas where large apartment complexes have been built recently.

One education office decided to raise the number of classrooms from 30 to 36 as a stopgap measure but is finding it difficult to create more classrooms. It is considering using some library space as a classroom or building a temporary school building in a nearby empty lot. Officials say schools need to make plans for the increase in the number of classes, but the number of new students will start declining again from 2008.

The Ministry of Education says the number of new elementary school students, which has been declining 20,000-30,000 every year since 2002 when the number stood at 686,315, is to surge temporarily by 23,000 to 625,377 in 2007 due to a mini baby-boom that hit the nation in 2000, when the number of newborns stood at 637,000, some 20,000 more than the previous year.

(englishnews@chosun.com )