Academic Performance Expectations

Korea’s Performance Expectations

National Rank

When it comes to testing there are not many countries that can contend with Korea. If you want TEST results then Korea is the country for you. Depending on what charts and years you are looking at South Korea is in the top five when it comes to Mathematics and Problem Solving. They contend with Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan. In looking up statistics and numbers, there were a couple other countries that would sneak into that top five but generally it was these five Asian countries.

4th Grade Math

8th Grade math

Korea Overall

Why?

So why does Korea do so well in their test scores? Much like other countries teachers have to constantly go to teacher training seminars. The teachers in Korea are well educated. Teachers in Korea are constantly being evaluated and critiqued. It is not like yay I received my teaching license, so now I can relax. They are always under review and needing to improve themselves. Teachers in Korea (at least the province I work in) actually cannot stay in the same school for more than 4 years. The teacher must rotate schools and always be under different leadership. Because of this constant change teachers are always learning from their peers and learning to get a wide range of teaching styles and techniques.

Korea also gives a LARGE amount of money into their education. Koreans view of education is that it is extremely vital to their success as a country because they cannot rely on other means of economic growth. (ie. natural resources or even their land mass since they are such a small country) In my opinion I think this is why Korea has made such a large push in technology and electronics in the last 25 years. This is one of their greatest assets and strengths to their country.

Academic Expectations

These students have a tremendous amount of expectations placed on them.

Teachers -

Are constantly evaluating them and giving them tests. Their class work is strictly designed for testing. The teachers only teach for the test, so many of them put a lot of pressure on the students to perform well on the test because that will then reflect on them preparing them for that test.

School/School District -

The government of Korea analyses each province and their test scores. As a result, this trickles down to the district and school. Each school will push their students to do better. From what I have seen, the better the test results, the more funding the school will receive.

Parents -

Parents put a TON of pressure on their children. They make them go to academy or after school programs until late into the night. For the families that have more money, this will generally mean that the students will go to more private academies and have more pressure on them to receive high marks. In Korea, the measure of success is your pocketbook.

Students -

Since the teachers, school and parents put so much pressure on them they feel like there is nothing else they can do but perform at academics. With all of this pressure put on them they end up putting it on themselves and so they become very competitive with their classmates and must ALWAYS be first (which is nice when you want to play a game with them :P ). In Korea the competition for jobs and getting into the ‘best’ university to get that job is extremely high. So students will study endlessly in High School so that they can receive high enough marks on their Korean-ACT to get into University. This pressure is so enormous that Korea is among the highest rate of teenage suicide in the world.

Personal View

Korea has its strengths but it definitely has its weaknesses. It is important for teachers to place a level of academic expectations on their students, but it should not be at the extreme that i feel Korea places on it students. Sure, I think that their scores are phenomenal but at what expense? So many of the children here cannot be children. They are getting only 3-4 hours of sleep a night in high school, because of their private academies and amount of studying they do. USA is nowhere close to perfect, in fact USA needs a lot of improvement in its education world, but kids can still be kids. Education is extremely important, but to me life should be enjoyed and lived to the fullest. Life is not about studying 18 hours a day. If studying is something someone enjoys and they WANT to invest this time into it, the by all means do it, but the children in Korea should not receive this much pressure to perform.