A BURDEN ON PARENTS & STUDENTS
Since the early 1980’s private tutoring of middle and high school students has been an off-again, on-again affair. Mainly because of the highly-competitive college entrance exam, it has became common practice in Korea for parents of middle or high school students to force their children to attend after-school classes at private academies, or “hagwons” as they are known in Korean.
Parents with especially unmotivated students usually hire a private tutor, usually a college student, to give personalized instructions on the basic exam subjects of English, Korean, and mathematics.
The private tutoring has been a boon to teachers and college students serving as private tutors but a burden to the young students who have to spend their teenage years sitting with their noses in books as well as a huge financial burden on their parents.
1996 statistics showed that the average spending on education for families with middle and high school children was about 25% of the family budget. The actual amount spent to provide private classes for children was about 300,000 won per month, more than 2 times the amount spent for food, medical care, or for clothing.
The financial burden on parents has been so great that private tutoring of middle or high school students was banned by the government during the 1980’s. Even worse that the fact that many families struggled to pay the exorbitant fees charged by private tutors and private institutes, students whose parents could not afford to pay for private lessons were placed at a severe disadvantage. Getting into college depended more money than on brains.
In spite of the ban, however, it was hard for the government to stop the tutoring completely. The ban was unenforceable, so the government relented and permitted private tutoring to begin again.
One of the reasons for the revision of the college entrance system was to wipe out the practice of private tutoring, but the exact opposite occurred. In the past English, Korean, and mathematics made up 60% of the test, so only those subjects needed extra study. But since students’ high school grades will now be one deciding factors for admission to college, private tutoring has been extended to include all subjects.
There doesn’t seem to be any easy way to end private tutoring. This is bad news for parents but good news for the thousands of college students who support themselves.
