Exploratory Survey on Parents’ Perceptions of Elementary School Operation and Facility Improvement in Pandemic Circumstances

Abstract

This study investigated the perception of elementary school parents about elementary school management in a pandemic situation. The sur-vey covered 187 parents of elementary school students nationwide and applied the snowball sampling method. As the results of the Im-portant-Preference analysis, the "Facilities for infection prevention" showed the highest preference and importance for the prevention of air-borne infection in elementary schools. After that, "Personal hygiene," "Space for infection prevention," "Class operation method," and "At-tendance method" are followed. Many respondents thought positively about the operation of ventilation and sterilization devices and the installation of individual partitions. That is to say, there is a high demand from parents for the expansion of infection prevention facilities in schools during the pandemic, and there is a need to prepare a response plan. In addition, it is noteworthy that there is a high burden on par-tial school attendance and a high preference for full school attendance during a pandemic. This means that the burden of child care on par-ents and the burden on school staff may conflict during the pandemic. Therefore, it is judged that it is necessary to prepare policy alterna-tives that can sufficiently reflect the demands of these stakeholders.