hankyoreh

Autonomous private high schools have reached a dead end. Their ratio of prospective students to enrolled students has fallen from 2.41:1 in their first year, to 1.44:1 last year and 1.26:1 this year. In Seoul, 11 out of 26 such high schools had fewer applicants than places, while in most cases the number of applicants barely exceeded the number of places. The situation is similar outside the capital. At the beginning of this month, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) introduced emergency measures including autonomous powers of screening and permission to change schools an unlimited number of times, but with little effect. Calls are growing for a final decision to be made.
Autonomous private high schools are symbolic of President Lee Myung-bak’s education policy. Lee pledged in his manifesto to establish 100 of them during his term in office. This is why the Lee administration unreasonably transformed 51 schools that did not meet the necessary conditions into autonomous private high schools. Now, however, some such schools are not even receiving a single applicant. The fact that the government has opened the door for schools to return to normal status speaks for itself. This disaster is the product of the Lee administration’s clumsy competition-oriented education and policies to subject education to the free market. 　
After three years, private autonomous high schools have failed to pass the mark. The Lee administration claimed that the positive competition such schools provided by broadening the choice of education available to students would raise the quality of public education, that increased autonomy in curriculum setting would bring increased diversity in education, and that normal schools would receive greater financial support. The result, however, has been a decline in educational capacity and socioeconomic segregation due to an increase in poor students at normal schools, while autonomous private high school curricula have grown more standardized, focusing on university entrance exam subjects such as Korean, English and math.
School budgets have tightened through the introduction of the “workout system,” which promised financial support to autonomous private high schools in critical situations. A tiny minority of such schools have performed outstandingly when it comes to the university entrance examination, but the function of this has been to reinforce education aimed specifically at passing the exam. 　　
Warning of such outcomes was, in fact, already given when the autonomous private school policy was originally forced through. In one survey by an educational group last January, teachers at a private autonomous high school answered that failure to meet admission quotas was due to school fees increasing in a situation where grades were disadvantageous, there were no differentiated education programs, and college admission results had not been verified. Contrary to the government’s naive expectations, all parents wanted from autonomous private high schools from the start were competitive university entrance exam results. 　　
The Lee administration’s plan to grant autonomous private high schools autonomy in screening prospective students is a belated attempt to go along with this. Given, however, that this may shake up already weak public education by demolishing fairness and resurrecting the high school entrance exam, it is an extreme response. It is not something that should be done in order to save a single manifesto pledge by the president.
　　
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