Korea's broken public education system

By Yoon Ja-young

Recently, statistics about Koreans' expenditure on private education made headlines. The top 20 percent income bracket of households spent around 1.14 million won ($860) per month on private education, which is similar to the combined amount spent on food and housing expenses. Even lower-income households are not significantly different; households in the bottom 40 percent income bracket spent more on private education than on food.

Private education spending in Korea is only increasing. Last year, the total private education expenses for elementary, middle and high school students reached 26 trillion won, a 10 percent increase compared to the previous year, despite a decreasing number of students.

In the country with the world's lowest birthrate, private education expenses are considered one of the major factors that discourage parents from having more children. And this is largely due to the collapse of the public education system.

A friend of mine sighed after meeting her kid's homeroom teacher at the beginning of the semester. During their conversation, the teacher advised her to send her daughter to a “hagwon” ― a private tutoring institute ― because she was weak in mathematics. Instead of pondering over ways to support a student struggling with math at school, the teacher suggested sending her to an external commercial education service.

This isn't surprising at all. I know many working moms who are school teachers and even they are sending their own children to hagwon, without a single exception. They share information about which hagwon provides better education. Some teachers even claim that schools are meant for developing social skills while studies should be done elsewhere, to which many parents agree (or maybe they just accept it as reality).

In the past, studying was primarily done at school. Schools used to provide extra classes for students needing further study, and even provided evening self-study sessions, taking responsibility for students' education. Many students from working-class families or from provincial backgrounds, who couldn't afford the benefits of private education represented by areas like Daechi-dong, entered prestigious universities. When admitted, they knew whom they should thank ― their school teachers. However, this is no longer the case as schools pass their fundamental educational role to hagwon.

Students are doing their hagwon homework during school hours, and after staying up late attending hagwon the previous night, they fall asleep during regular school classes. Some parents see nothing wrong there and rather hope that schools won't interfere with their children's hagwon schedule.

Top-notch tutors ― who also provide classes online ― have become a kind of idol for students, while school teachers' value has diminished in the eyes of students and have lost their professional dignity.

It's not that teachers don't want to teach students. Teachers who send their own children to hagwon are also expressing dissatisfaction with the situation in which the education provided by schools alone isn't at all sufficient. In Korea, where one has to go through intense competition to become a teacher, teachers are a highly qualified group of people. I am sure that the homeroom teacher who advised sending the student with weak math skills to a hagwon gave sincere advice, taking into account the reality of the Korean education system.

While students and parents are struggling to survive this reality, education policies seem to be distorting it even more by adhering to idealistic rhetoric. The idea of so-called free semesters, during which students explore future careers without the burden of mid-term or final exams, sounds ideal, but this exploration is more hobby-focused than career-related. Parents become anxious during this “wasted time” and come to rely even more on hagwon education.

Some even consider these periods as an opportunity for their children to be intensively immersed in hagwon studies. Meanwhile, the academic level of those who can't afford such private education falls behind, only widening the gap between students.

High schools in Seoul's Gangnam District, known for high academic performances of students, see a dozen of their students dropping out of school each year. This is mostly because it is extremely difficult to get the GPA percentile they need to gain admission to prestigious universities. It's also because there's no need to be at school when the hagwon they attend guides them better to those universities. If students don't see any reason why they should be at school rather than at a hagwon, Korea's public education will never improve.

The writer is finance editor at The Korea Times.