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Lee backs cutting private tuition costs

Published: 28 Oct. 2009, 22:14

President Lee Myung-bak has ordered education authorities to come up with a solution to the ongoing controversy in the political community over abolishing the decades-old foreign language high school system, according to a key Blue House official yesterday.

“The government should devise countermeasures [for the foreign language high school issue] preemptively and actively,” Lee was quoted as saying by the source at the presidential office. “The Blue House needs to encourage that.”

The source also said Lee sent a warning signal against “populism” in the political community over education - one of the most attention-grabbing issues in Korea - at a meeting on Monday with related ministry officials.

Lee’s remarks come at a time when the debate is heating up over whether or not to change foreign language schools into autonomous private high schools starting next March. The idea was proposed by Chung Doo-un, a lawmaker with the Grand National Party. He said early last month that foreign language high schools, which are classified as special-purpose high schools under the education law and have autonomy over their curriculum, are the major culprits behind excessive spending on private education.

Korean parents yearn for their children to pass the highly competitive admission procedure and become foreign language high school students. A pass mostly guarantees entrance to prestigious universities and better social status afterwards. In the past two decades or so Korean parents have sent their children to after-school private education institutes, or hagwon, or provided tutors. He defined the special schools as “a witch to be hunted.”

The president said, “You are not supposed to raise the burden of private education costs when ordinary citizens are suffering [financial hardship] .?.?. If such an argument [as abolishing foreign language high schools] persists, won’t there be talks to shut down autonomous private high schools, too?”

He added: “The goal of education [in Korea] lies in strengthening overall educational capacity based on autonomy and variety while reducing private education spending by a large margin. Only a harmonized variety - like a flower bed - can boost education competitiveness.”

Lee Jae-oh, head of the Anti-corruption & Civil Rights Commission and President Lee’s confidant, backed up the president’s view in a cable TV news show yesterday.

“What really matters is how to clamp down on surging private education costs and how to develop the school admission process more reasonably. Whether or not to shut down [foreign language high] schools is not an essential matter,” he said.

Noting that the more diverse schools are, the better, the anti-corruption commission head added, “Foreign language high schools are supposed to let even poorer students with outstanding scholastic ability enter, not only those students who have spent a hefty amount of money on private education.”

By Seo Ji-eun [[email protected]]