Korean education: A wonderful export

By David Azócar

South Korea is one of the most high-tech nations in the world. In fact, Seoul has the highest per capita broadband and wireless access of any country. These facets of everyday Korean life gain even more relevance once one realizes that they are key elements in Korea’s phenomenally successful educational system.

From 18,555 miles away, the Chilean story is altogether different. When Chileans speak about the “quality of education in Chile”, it is often meant as a bad joke. And though there has been a fair amount of national media coverage on the issue, investment has not necessarily meant improvements in education.

Across the Pacific, there is a small, yet remarkable nation that ranks third in TIMSS mathematics and science results. These numbers are no coincidence. They are the result of a strategy begun in the 1980s, which blossomed in the 1990s. Information technologies were the centerpiece of reform.

To understand the Korean elementary and secondary school system, it is important to understand that it was founded on four pillars that can only function when they are employed in unison.

The whole as a sum of its parts

The first key element is the platform, on which Korean education is offered. The system, where curriculum and other important facets are accessed, is called EDUNET. It is a vast, public access network where teachers, parents and students can interact.

This educational intranet has 5.74 million users and serves as a channel of communication between students, teachers and parents. 78% of teachers state that EDUNET is extremely useful. It also saves $89 billion pesos annually in money spent on books.

But an intranet with free access is not enough to achieve quality in education; that requires strengthening students’ knowledge of curriculum. This step is where parents become part of the system. The Cyber Home Learning System (CHLS) was founded in 2005.

CHLS made Edunet available to every household (parents and children), and with it, homework assignments and guidance on how to complete them. The system addresses ways in which the curriculum can be learned, as well as making it age/level-appropriate.

Thus, Korea has the platform, and people who can deliver the curriculum. Now we need to go a step further: to share experiences. Thus KERIS was born.

KERIS is a national database where mistakes and possible solutions are listed. The answers are also properly validated and give views on how to resolve a given situation.

This third leg of Edunet is growing and had 2 million users in 2002. In 2003, they reached 6 million. In 2005, the volume rose to an alarming 63 million.

All these peripheral systems rotate around the axis of the basic ingredient of education: the book. The Digital Library System (DLS) is in charge of offering online curriculum.

Thesis papers, books, and novels are all available at no charge in every Korean city. 7111 libraries are interconnected, as of 2005, and serve 5 million users. Libraries in Japan and Australia are also part of the network.

Korea has seen how social development is directly related to education levels. Thirty years ago, the ROK was an underdeveloped economy, but today it is the twelfth-richest in the world. Its leaders have developed a meticulous plan that catapulted Korea into being one of the largest manufacturers in the world.

School systems such as the Korean one are largely unknown in Chile, where there is an urgent to make drastic changes. In an ensuing piece, we will review how teaching is performed in Korean classrooms and what can we learn from their education model.