Stratification in Extended Education Participation and its Implications for Education Inequality

This study identified subgroups of elementary students based on similar patterns of participation in four different types of extended education in Korea. The study also investigated relationships between student patterns of extended education participation and their various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, including residential location, parental education, and family income level. To achieve these aims, the study used latent profile analysis and logistic regression on a dataset of 18,186 students from 786 elementary schools provided by Statistics Korea. Results reveal five distinctive subgroups of students in terms of extended education participation: afterschool academic program users, shadow education users, moderate afterschool academic program users, ordinary users, and talent development seekers. Results also show that student socioeconomic and demographic characteristics are strongly associated with their classification into the above-mentioned subgroups. These findings signal the possibility that “educational stratification” based on student socioeconomic background may be occurring in the area of extended education.