hankyoreh

Science and Technology to foreign language high schools is 28.1 times greater than the total granted to ordinary high schools over the past three years.

A report presented to the National Assembly by Democratic Labor Party (DLP) Lawmaker Kwon Young-ghil, shows that the amount of Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) grants given to foreign language high schools in 2008 was nearly nine times higher than those given to ordinary high schools. In addition, subsidies from local governments nationwide to foreign language high schools amounted to more than twice the support given to ordinary high schools. As a result, critics are charging that the government, instead of minimizing educational disparities, has actually promoted educational inequality by focusing public education funds from the taxpayers to students at foreign language schools, who already experience relatively favorable study conditions.

Lawmaker Kwon, a member of the National Assembly’s Education, Science and Technology Committee presented this information Monday in an analysis of both special grants given by the Education Ministry and local government subsidies for educational expenditures for the period from 2006 to 2008.

According to the data, students enrolled in the 30 foreign language high schools nationwide receive an average of 868,857 Won per student in special grants from MEST, some 28.1 times the average of 30,941 Won provided to students at ordinary high schools. This means that for every 100,000 Won in support received by students at ordinary high schools, students at foreign language high schools receive 2.81 million Won in support.

These figures show that the amount of taxpayer support provided to foreign language high schools far exceeds the amount given to ordinary high schools over the past three years. It also seems to indicate that education authorities have not upheld their pledge to accompany the development of special-purpose high schools with a focus on reducing the resulting educational disparities.

Special grant applications are received by education superintendents in each city or province and decided upon directly by the education minister. For this reason, critics are saying that MEST leadership in education policy has been demonstrated by giving preferential treatment to foreign language high schools.

Lawmaker Kwon continued, “Even the government’s statistics indicate that foreign language high schools are mainly attended by the children of wealthy classes.” Kwon added, “the Education Ministry deserves to receive criticism for actually promoting educational inequality.” Indeed, according to parliamentary audit and inspection data recently released by Democratic Party (DP) Lawmaker An Min-suk, the six foreign language high schools in the Seoul area represent only 0.18 percent of basic livelihood security recipients, far lower than the 3.6 percent average for all high schools in the Seoul region. Other research shows that a greater percentage of students at foreign language schools have parents who are in high-earning professions, such as law and medicine, in comparison with students at ordinary high schools. In addition, parents of foreign language high school students bear an average of 6.03 million Won in expenses, some 1.5 times the amount for parents of ordinary high school students.

The reaction from the MEST office in charge of special grants, however, is that there is no real problem. Gang Gu-do, head of MEST’s Local Education Finance Division said, “Special grants are provided only to places in need of support from public funding, so there is no great significance in examining whether a bias is present.” Gang continued, “Moreover, the recipient schools are all selected by the superintendent of education for the city or province in question, so it is not that the education ministry is biased in its support.”

Some within MEST, however, are commenting on the fact that there are many problems. “With the special grants, the education minister himself has direct authority to decide who is to receive support, so his judgments are strongly reflected,” said a MEST official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The National Assembly should look into whether there has been some special reason for providing more support to foreign language high schools,” the official added.

In addition to support from MEST, foreign language high schools receive close to six times as much as ordinary high schools in local government subsidies for educational expenditures. In particular, statistics show that 73 percent of students at foreign language high schools are originally from other cities or provinces, indicating that money that should be going to support students from that locality are being channeled off to students from other areas. “Essentially, the ordinary students of the region and their parents are suffering from the local governments’ blind competition in developing special purposes high schools,” said Rep. Kwon.

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