Hagwon

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Korean spelling
Korean alphabet : 학원
Revised Romanization : Hagwon
McCune-Reischauer : Hagwŏn
Building with Hagwon schools in Dunsan-dong, Daejeon, South Korea

As Hagwon ( 학원 ) in are South Korea private educational institutions referred to in which students in addition to their regular education will they receive in public schools, get additional education or conditioned on the existence of entrance exams for higher schools or universities.

Word meaning

Hagwon means in contrast to Hagyo ( 학교 (school)) translated, academy, institute, educational institution or private school.

history

While Korea opened up to Western influences in the 18th century and the Korean government opened the Tongmunhak ( 동 문학 ), the first school for learning the English language and Western culture in 1883 , followed by other language schools for other languages ​​in 1895, the Missionary Henry Appenzeller opened a private school for learning the English language in the same year, but also covertly for his missionary work. At that time, a few private language schools were founded in the country.

In 1948 compulsory schooling was introduced and in 1968 the entrance to middle school without an examination was introduced. 1973 followed the abolition of the entrance exams for high schools and the introduction of the standardization of the same. The whole point of the changes was to make privately funded education superfluous. But the competition for access to universities allowed the Hagwon system to exist until private tuition was banned by the dictator Chun Doo-hwan ( 전두환 ) in 1980 . Chun's concept was to increase the educational opportunities of the poor people and keep them free from educational expenses. But the pre-university examination remained and soon led to pressure to perform and an exam battle, which resulted in a further expansion of privately financed education. In April 2000 the constitutional court of the country then overturned the still officially valid ban on private educational institutions in a supreme court decision, stating that the law violates the fundamental right to free education. This basically cleared the way for the Hagwons, even if the government initially tried to regulate and reduce the price of private education.

Situation since 2008

The pressure to perform in the South Korean education system begins for children at daycare and continues through exams to be passed through elementary, middle and high school. The system, which is trimmed for performance and examination, culminates in the examination for admission to one of the country's elite universities. In order to pass the entrance exams and achieve the highest possible scores, many parents send their children to the private schools known as Hagwon, whose tuition fees are extremely high. For younger students, the aim is to improve their performance in their subjects by attending a Hagwon, whereas for older students who are aiming to attend college or university, the aim is to achieve the best entrance examination results in competition with the competition.

In 2008, 70% of all students in South Korea are said to have received lessons in private schools parallel to their regular school lessons and their parents spent around 20.4 trillion  won on it, which corresponded to the exchange rate of around 12.8 billion  euros at the time and comparatively 1 / 10 of the state budget.

In 2009, the Korean government estimated that approximately 95,000 Hagwons existed in the country and that up to 84,000 private teachers provided additional classes to students. The Hagwons open their doors when state schools close, and classes often don't end until 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. for students. The lessons are extremely expensive. In 2009, the costs for parents were estimated at around 1.5 million won per child and month, which was the equivalent of around 940 euros at the time. The result is that Korean families can no longer have as many children because the cost of education is increasingly beyond the family's budget. The birth rate in South Korea in 2009 was 1.19 children per family, one of the lowest values ​​in industrialized countries in the world.

So that educational opportunities in South Korea are less dependent on Hagwons' visits, the Korean government tried to use the Educational Broadcasting System (EBS) to provide free access to additional education for students via television and the Internet and founded 70% of the test questions of the College Scholastic Admission Tests on working material of the EBS.

For 2015, the OECD stated that 69.4% of middle school students and 50.2% of high school students received additional private tuition and that 44% of expenditure on higher education was provided by private households.

literature

  • Jung Keun-sik: The education system in South Korea . In: Lee Eun-Jeung, Hannes B. Mosler (ed.): Country report Korea (=  series of publications . Volume 1577 ). Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2015, ISBN 978-3-8389-0577-8 .
  • Education Policy Outlook Korea . OECD , November 2016 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Minjungs Korean-German Dictionary . Korean Society for German Studies, Seoul 1981, ISBN 978-89-387-0502-0 , p.  1951 (Korean).
  2. ↑ Andrei Lankov: Original English boom . In: The Korea Times . October 4, 2007, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  3. ^ Jung: The education system in South Korea . In: Country Report Korea . 2015, p. 315 .
  4. ^ Jung: The education system in South Korea . In: Country Report Korea . 2015, p. 322 .
  5. ^ A b Casey J. Lartigue Jr .: You'll Never Guess What South Korea Frowns Upon . In: Washington Post . May 28, 2000, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  6. ^ Jung: The education system in South Korea . In: Country Report Korea . 2015, p. 323 .
  7. ↑ Kim Hwa-young: Hagwon - battle arenas of learning . In: Koreana . Volume 13, No. 2. The Korea Foundation , 2018, ISSN  1975-0617 , p. 1 (German language edition).
  8. ^ Susan S. Kim, Min Zhou : Community Forces, Social Capital, and Educational Achievement: The Case of Supplementary Education in the Chinese and Korean Immigrant Communities . Harvard University , p. 13 , accessed November 1, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Currencies Quote - Euro - Korean Won . Reuters , 2008, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  10. ↑ a b Kim Jeom-ok : Hagwon Culture in Korea . In: The Korea Times . January 28, 2009, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  11. ^ A b Max de Lotbinière : South Korean parents told: pre-school English 'harmful' . In: The Guardian . Guardian News and Media Limited , November 8, 2011, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  12. ^ Education Policy Outlook Korea . 2016, p.  6 .
  13. ^ Education Policy Outlook Korea . 2016, p.  16 .