With schools expected to continue mostly online in the fall, worries grow over a widening achievement gap

South Korea saw five new special schools open in the year ending March 31, the largest yearly increase in seven years, with new additions in Seoul, Incheon, Gangwon Province and South Chungcheong Province. Special schools are tailored to the needs of students with physical, intellectual and emotional disabilities. According to the Ministry of Education on Sunday, the number of special schools in...

South Korea will increase the admission quotas at medical schools and establish a new public medical school in a bid to broaden the reach of health care services, lawmakers and government officials said Thursday. The decision was confirmed earlier in the day during a policy coordination meeting between the ruling Democratic Party (DP) and the government. Under the decision aimed at ramping up m...

More South Korean universities are positively responding to the demand for partial tuition refunds to compensate students for disrupted learning due to the coronavirus pandemic. The National Korea Maritime & Ocean University recently became the first school in the southern port city of Busan to decide to offer refunds. The school said it will pay back 10 percent of the tuition for the spring sem...

The Education Ministry plans to ask all of nearly 60,000 student athletes in the country about their experiences with physical and verbal abuse, after the suicide of a triathlete last month brought the issue of violence in elite sports into the spotlight. Through 17 regional educational offices, the ministry will interview all 59,252 student athletes enrolled at elementary, middle and high schoo...

The Ministry of Education on Monday backed the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s decision to revoke special status to two autonomous middle schools. The ministry announced it has decided to uphold the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s proposal to revoke the licenses of Daewon International Middle School and Younghoon International Middle School for stratifying schools, for deepening inequal...

High school seniors fear becoming casualty of coronavirus in college admissions; repeaters argue everybody’s suffering

Another elite high school in Seoul is likely to lose its autonomous status next year amid the liberal administration’s highly-controversial push to do away with elite schools. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced Thursday that it has started the process of officially revoking the designation of Whimoon High School in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, as an independent private sch...

COVID-19 is having an adverse effect on Korean society as a whole, especially among high school students. While facing the challenge of preparing to go to college, students find it hard to participate in their academic and other activities properly. There are very few things that they can do on their own, with many activities restricted due to the coronavirus outbreak. Notably, a youth club cont...

South Korean university students have joined together to file a class action lawsuit against the Ministry of Education and schools, seeking partial tuition refunds for disruptions to learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Movement for Tuition Refunds, a student group formed by the National University Student Council, held a press briefing on Wednesday in front of the Seoul Central District C...

The education ministry is set to expand Korean language education in Asian nations, by rolling out a support project to train locals there as professional Korean language teachers, the ministry said Wednesday. The plan is in line with the ministry's core project unveiled in February to bolster overseas Korean education. In the second half, the ministry will start a new project to support a trai...

EDUCATION SPEP Global education firm SPEP has been at the center of business education, providing training and consulting programs to increase the foreign language proficiency of professionals at local and overseas institutions and enterprises. Under the brand philosophy of “value beyond language fluency,” the business English education provider, which has been working with global clients for ...

Seoul City’s education chief vowed to reduce educational disparity and innovate the current grading system to promote equal opportunities for all students. The initiatives are intended to support the liberal Moon Jae-in administration’s educational reform promoting social fairness, which has also called for abolition of elite institutions across the country. The policy has faced some controversy...

CYBER UNIVERSITY SEOUL CYBER UNIVERSITY Seoul Cyber University has pulled ahead of other high-level educational institutions in online education, which emerged as a major phenomenon in the aftermath of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Established in 2000, the country’s first cyber university has been at the forefront of online education by adopting state-of-art technology to optimize the...