A Service That Keeps One Neighbourhood Academy’s Make-Up Classes on One Screen

Parent communication and make-up records move separately

In Statistics Korea’s 2025 survey of private education spending for elementary, middle, and high school students, the participation rate in private education was 75.7%, and participating students spent an average of KRW 604,000 per month. About three in four students use private education, and families paying a substantial monthly amount need clear information about whether a class was delivered and how many sessions remain.

The Act on the Establishment and Operation of Private Teaching Institutes and Extracurricular Lessons does not set a nationwide deadline for notifying a student absence within a certain number of hours or arranging a make-up class within a certain number of days. Instead, academies must register their courses, instructors, and tuition fees, and maintain the books and documents needed for operation. That makes each academy’s own make-up policy and its record of what actually happened important.

Tuition and refunds are also difficult to separate from make-up operations. An academy cannot collect more than the registered and posted amount, and must follow the relevant standards if grounds for a refund arise. It therefore needs to distinguish, from the beginning, between a make-up that replaces an existing class and an additional paid class.

Student names, guardian contact details, attendance, reasons for absence, and enrolment information are personal data. The Personal Information Protection Act requires organisations handling this data to take security measures, while its Enforcement Decree also requires procedures for setting access permissions by employee and removing access for departing staff. Continuing to share the same spreadsheet and KakaoTalk group chat among several instructors may be convenient, but the management responsibility remains.

Operating standards may also need checking by region. The Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education’s academy operations manual states that teaching hours for school-subject academies serving kindergarten children and enrolled elementary, middle, and high school students run from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Rather than automatically adding a make-up class after the final lesson, an academy needs to consider the standards of its local education support office, along with students’ travel and rest time.

Follow a small tutoring academy in a new town in Gyeonggi Province

Consider an academy director teaching elementary and middle school students from a commercial building in a new town in Gyeonggi Province, with six instructors and four classrooms. When a student is absent, the guardian sends a KakaoTalk message to the director or assigned instructor. The instructor marks it in a paper attendance book, and an administrative staff member later transfers the absence date to a spreadsheet.

Arranging a make-up adds more work. The academy checks the assigned instructor’s free time, the student’s school and other academy schedule, a class at the same level, and an available classroom separately. It then sends candidate times to the guardian and waits for a reply. When a time changes, the spreadsheet, instructor schedule, classroom chart, and guardian chat may need to be updated in three or four places.

The problem is less the absence itself than the scattered status that follows. Cases can remain until month-end where an absence was received but no make-up date exists, a date was set but not passed to the instructor, or a make-up was completed but not deducted from the remaining lesson count. When a staff member is away or leaves, it can also be difficult to find commitments buried in KakaoTalk conversations.

A small service can begin by creating one make-up card for each student the moment an absence is entered. The card can include the original class date, deadline for an available make-up, assigned instructor, class at the same level, usable classrooms, and whether the guardian has been notified. It stays on one screen until the make-up is complete.

Guardians see only bookable slots, not the full timetable. When a guardian chooses a slot, the student, instructor, and classroom schedules are locked together, and the same details are sent to all three parties. If the time changes, the service keeps a before-and-after record instead of deleting the earlier notice, so the academy can check who knows what.

This is where narrowing the geography helps. Academies under the same local education support office may be subject to local standards. A product preconfigured with that area’s closing times, commonly used make-up wording, and rules by academy type can be easier to explain and adopt than a complex product designed for every academy in Korea.

Some work should still remain with people. Instructors and guardians should decide on absences that need exceptions, such as infectious disease or long-term treatment, moving a student to a class at a different level, and whether a late make-up class is too demanding for the student. The director should also personally check urgent communication and refund decisions rather than relying only on automated messages.

A local approach also helps when finding the first customers. Instead of asking three directors in the same building or academy district to abandon their existing attendance books, begin by organising only this week’s unconfirmed make-ups for them. After learning the repeating rules in one area, it is more practical to make small screen variations for academic tutoring academies, piano academies, and art academies.

Elsewhere, operators reduced one make-up process first

Japan: E-Space

E-Space provides scheduling, attendance, and guardian communication through monthly subscriptions for small Japanese academies and programming, English-language, and sports classes. A programming class in Akihabara with 20 students and three instructors began with a process of moving information received through messaging into a schedule and separate documents.

Guardians now handle absences and make-ups in the app, and instructors, guardians, and administrators receive the confirmed details together. The operator said weekly schedule adjustments fell from two to three hours to 30 minutes and missed communications fell to zero, but these are that operator’s reported experience.

Japan: Comiru

Comiru provides guardian communication, absence reporting, and make-up selection for Japanese tutoring academies. Before adopting it, Yagijuku, an individual tutoring academy, handled phone work. Guardians then began reporting absences by smartphone and choosing an available make-up date themselves.

After expanding operations to five classrooms, Yagijuku said incoming calls fell from about 10 per day to two. It also reported that twice-monthly notification work fell from about 150 hours to 15 hours, but this was the result of changing the overall communication system, not a figure isolated to the make-up feature.

United States: Jackrabbit Class

Jackrabbit Class offers a monthly subscription service priced by student count for children’s activity organisations such as ballet, gymnastics, and swimming. The Academy of Russian Ballet in Virginia found it difficult to properly track same-day make-up visits and make-ups provided in excess of absences across two locations.

After changing its process so parents could register absences and book open classes directly, it applied rules such as booking at least 24 hours in advance and using the make-up within 30 days of an absence. Once a make-up was confirmed, the assigned instructor and guardian received the same notice, and the academy said it reduced last-minute confusion and excessive make-ups.

Four things to try selling in one area first

1. An unconfirmed make-up inbox

• A service that connects each student’s progress status in one line, from receiving an absence report to completing the make-up.
• Used by neighbourhood academic tutoring academies with three to seven instructors that use paper attendance books and KakaoTalk together.
• Because each academy can set its own absence deadline, it is easier to begin with a product that preserves each academy’s policy than with complex nationwide common rules.
• The first screen shows, in order, absences created today, make-ups without a date, and make-ups that must be completed today.

2. A guardian make-up booking link

• A service where guardians can see only available make-up slots and choose one directly, without installing a separate app.
• Used by piano, art, and coding academies where the director sends several candidate times whenever a student is absent.
• As in the overseas examples, setting the booking window and limiting options to classes at the same level first can reduce phone and message back-and-forth.
• The first screen shows the child’s name, one remaining make-up session, three available dates, and a confirmation button.

3. An instructor and classroom conflict board

• A service that immediately shows whether an instructor or classroom is already in use when a make-up time is entered.
• Used by music, dance, and art academies that divide the use of private lesson rooms, ensemble rooms, and practical studios.
• If an academy matches the instructor’s schedule but misses the room, it must move the lesson on the day. The problem is especially clear for neighbourhood academies short on space.
• The first screen shows four classrooms for today, the student and instructor names using each time slot, and marks conflicts in red.

4. A local make-up policy setup assistant

• A service that creates a draft for make-up application deadlines, usage deadlines, notice wording, and record fields when the academy type and region are selected.
• Used by small academy directors creating make-up rules for the first time or seeking operating guidance from their local education support office.
• Teaching-hour and facility standards can differ by region and student group, so a tool with local verification items can be more useful than a nationwide common document.
• The first screen includes fields for region, academy type, and student age, plus a list of questions to check with the local education support office.

What to check today

Call three academies with three to 10 instructors in the same academy district. Ask only how many unconfirmed make-ups they had in the past week and how many places they copied that information into. If two of the three manage one absence in three or more places, such as an attendance book, spreadsheet, and KakaoTalk, or cannot immediately count their unconfirmed make-ups, it may be worth building a first screen to show them.

Why this matters where you are

Korea’s private education market, academy regulations, local education support offices, and KakaoTalk-based workflows are Korean conditions. In your own market, check where absence reports, scheduling, room availability, guardian communication, and lesson credits split into separate records. A local product may work best when it reflects the rules and communication habits that operators already use rather than trying to standardise every provider at once.