Education focus shifts to English

By Jonathan Thatcher  |   2008-6-15  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

SOUTH Korea's "wild geese fathers" manage a reunion with their children, and often wives, just once a year after seeing them off for study abroad, invariably to learn in English.

They are, contends a government zealous to reform, symptomatic of a damaged state education system that forces parents to throw money at private tuition and prevents Asia's fourth-largest economy from leaping to the world's top league.

"The government acknowledges that the lack of English is one of the factors that pulls down the competitiveness this country has," said Education Ministry spokesman Park Baeg-beom.

In the initial enthusiasm after the conservative government won office in December, there were even suggestions of teaching Korean history in English. At least one major SOUTH Korean company requires internal communication to be in English.

SOUTH Koreans, anxious to ensure their offspring are well-schooled, spend around US$5 billion a year to educate them abroad - equivalent to nearly 20 percent of the annual total allocated to education by the government.

At more than 100,000, SOUTH Koreans outnumber any other foreign student group in the United States.

And the spending at home on private education - mostly to supplement daytime lessons at state school - dwarfs that of most other countries.

It is common to see children in the streets and on public transport late at night after a round of private lessons. Often they will be up by dawn for more.

The Education Ministry estimates that as a percentage of GDP, SOUTH Korean parents spend four times more on average on private education than their counterparts in any other major economy.

Everyone seems to agree that the state schooling system, tinkered with for years by successive governments of differing political ideology, falls miserably short of providing the education on which SOUTH Korean society places such a high premium. There is less agreement on what to do about it.