Baby boomers and the collapse of the ‘narrow gate’: the equalisation policy and the expansion of secondary education in South Korea, 1968–1974

ABSTRACT

This study examines the implications of the ‘equalisation policy’ and the expansion of secondary education in South Korea in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The equalisation policy is one of the most radical school reform attempts in South Korea. A random assignment or lottery system for students was introduced for all middle schools in 1968 and all high schools in 1974, abolishing selective and competitive school-based entrance systems. This system was in operation without interruption until the early 1990s when new categories of schools were introduced as a part of South Korea’s participation in the global neoliberal school reform movement. The ‘second wave of equalisation’ since around 2010 and subsequent measures to ‘re-equalise’ schools draw attention to the origin of the equalisation policy and its significance in understanding the development of secondary education in South Korea.

KEYWORDS:

• Equalisation policy
• secondary education
• expansion
• baby boomers
• exam-based meritocracy
• South Korea

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Yoonmi Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan gusulsajeok yeongu [A Study on the Implications of the High School Equalisation Policy in 1974: An Oral History Approach]’, Hanguk Gyoyuk Munjae Yeongu [Korean Education Inquiry] 36, no. 3 (2018): 2–3.

² Hwan-Bo Park, ‘Haebangihu hakgyogyoyuk pengchang-ui gyumo-wa teukjing [The scope and characteristics of post-1945 expansion of schooling]’, in Daehanminguk gyoyuk 70 nyeon [70 Years of Education in the Republic of Korea], ed. Seong-Chol Oh (Seoul: National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, 2015), 157.

³ Ministry of Education & Korean Educational Development Institute, Gyoyuk tonggae yeonbo [Educational Statistics Yearbook] (Seoul: Ministry of Education & Korean Educational Development Institute, 1990; 2005).

⁴ Mark Bray, Confronting the Shadow Education System: What Government Policies for What Private Tutoring? (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2009).

⁵ Youl-Kwan Sung and Yoonmi Lee, ‘Politics and the Practice of School Change: The Hyukshin School Movement in South Korea’, Curriculum Inquiry 48 (2018): 239–40.

⁶ By neoliberal school reform movement, I refer to the policy directions geared towards market-driven competition, associated with measures on standardisation, high-stakes testing and external accountability, to improve performances in the educational system. This trend is often called GERM (Global Educational Reform Movement), usually by the opponents of such policy directions. See Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan, Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School (London: Routledge, 2012), 82.

⁷ Some works on the earlier phase of the reform include Dae-Jung Kang, ‘Gogyo pyeongjunhwa jaedo-ui jeongae gwajeong [The implementation of the high school equalisation policy]’, Gyoyuk Bipyeong (Educational Critique) 8 (2002): 56–74; Byeong-Sung Kim et al., Godeung hakgyo pyeongjunhwa jeongchek pyeongga-reul wihan gichoyeongu [Preliminary research for the evaluation of the High School Equalisation Policy] (Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute, 1985); Yeong-Cheol Kim and Tae-Jung Ghang, Godeung hakgyo pyeongjunhwa jeongchek-ui gaeseon bangan [Policy measures for improving the High School Equalisation Policy] (Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute, 1985); Bu-Kwon Park et al., Godeung hakgyo pyeongjunhwa jeongchek-ui jindan-gwa bowan bangan-ae daehan yeongu [Research on the policy measures for diagnosing and complementing the High School Equalisation Policy] (Seoul: Ministry of Education, 2002); and Jong-Hyeok Yun et al., Godeung hakgyo pyeongjunhwa jeongchek-ui jeokhabseong yeongu [Re-examining the compatibility of the High School Equalisation Policy] (Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute, 2003).

⁸ Previous studies on the High School Equalisation Policy have focused on the roles of the protagonists such as President Park Chung-Hee and the Minister of Education, Min Gwan-Shik. While there is a general agreement that the reform had much to do with Park’s political agenda, researchers have shown that the reform was supported by concerned professionals and the general public, due to the overheated competition and educational disparity at the time. See Don-Min Choi, ‘Gyoyuk jeongchek gyeoljyeong mit chujin gwajeong-aeseoui sahoejeok ihaegwangae bunseok: Gogyo pyeongjunhwa jeongchek-eul jungshim-euro [Analysis on Social interests in policy decisions and implementations focusing on the High School Equalisation Policy]’ (PhD diss., Hanyang University, 1997); Ji-Young Kim, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa [The High School Equalisation Policy of 1974]’, Gyoyuk Bipyeong [Educational Critique] 28 (2011): 151–79.

⁹ Takehiko Kariya, ‘Foreword: Secondary Education in East Asia – Battlefield for the Contradiction of Modernity’, in High School for All in East Asia: Comparing Experiences, ed. Shinichi Aizawa, Mei Kagawa and Jeremy Rappleye (New York: Routledge, 2019), xv–xix.

¹⁰ Yoonmi Lee and Youl-Kwan Sung, ‘Perceptions of the East Asian Model of Education and Modeling its Future on Finnish Success: South Korean Case’, in Understanding PISA’s Attractiveness: Critical Analyses in Comparative Policy Studies, ed. Florian Waldow and Gita Steiner-Khamsi (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 219–31.

¹¹ Kariya, ‘Foreword’, xvi.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Called Keijo Imperial University in Japanese and Kyeongseong Imperial University in Korean.

¹⁴ Kariya, ‘Foreword’, xviii.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Manabu Sato, ‘Imagining Neoliberalism and the Hidden Realities of the Politics of Reform: Teachers and Students in a Globalised Japan’, in Reimagining Japanese Education: Borders, Transfers, Circulations, and the Comparative, ed. D. B. Willis and Jeremy Rappleye (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2011), 225–46; Yoonmi Lee, ‘A Critical Dialogue with “Asia as Method”: A Response from Korean Education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory 51 (2019): 958–69; Lee and Sung, ‘Perceptions of the East Asian Model of Education’, 219–31.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Kariya, ‘Foreword’, xviii.

¹⁹ Hirofumi Taki, ‘Upper Secondary Education in Asia: A Quantitative Comparison with Western Countries’, in Aizawa et al., High School for All, 50.

²⁰ According to Taki (ibid., 55–8), the typology is based on how the systems manage students’ differences in terms of academic performance. The Separation Model selects students for the vocational track at an early age. The Internal Tracking Model has a comprehensive school system with a small proportion of vocational school attendance and with strong autonomy at the school-district level. The Grade Retention Model has students repeat grades from earlier stages. Finally, in the Individualised Welfare Model, comprehensive schools are common and inter-school differences are marginalised because of strong welfare policies.

²¹ Taki, ‘Upper Secondary Education in Asia’, 58–9.

²² However, even for these schools, no standardised test scores are applied and the use of testing is minimalised or prohibited.

²³ Taki, ‘Upper Secondary Education in Asia’, 63–7.

²⁴ As of 2019, the number of autonomous private high schools with special status compared with ordinary private schools totals 42 out of 2356 (nationwide).

²⁵ Ministry of Education, ‘Secondary Education’, http://english.moe.go.kr/sub/info.do?m=020103&s=english (accessed May 2, 2020).

²⁶ See Yoonmi Lee, Modern Education, Textbooks, and the Image of the Nation: Politics of Modernisation and Nationalism in Korean Education 1880–1910 (New York: Routledge, 2000).

²⁷ Gwageo was abolished in 1894 as part of the larger political and societal reform called the Gabo reforms. Through the reform measures, the traditional Confucian educational system was replaced by a western-modelled school system. Ibid.

²⁸ In Japan, large cram corporations started operations, such as the Sundai Preparatory School and the Kawai Cram School, in 1919 and 1933, respectively: Kangmin Zeng, Dragon Gate: Competitive Examinations and Their Consequences (London: Cassell, 1999), 13.

²⁹ Gyeong-Suk Lee, Shiheom gukmin-ui tanseng [The birth of a testing nation] (Seoul: Pureun Yeoksa, 2017).

³⁰ In 1955, the attainment rate was 90% in primary schools, 29.2% in middle schools, 17.3% in high schools, and 5.2% in higher education institutes: Park, ‘Haebangihu hakgyogyoyuk’, 156.

³¹ Seong-Chol Oh, ‘Hangukin-ui gyoyukyeol-gwa gukga [The educational fever of the Koreans and the state]’, in Daehanminguk gyoyuk 70 nyeon, ed. Seong-Chol Oh (Seoul: National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, 2015), 25–35.

³² Quoted in Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan’, 18. The oral history interviews quoted here were originally conducted for Yoonmi Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyopyeongjunhwa jeongchek-ui doib-gwa chogi shiheng [The introduction and early implementation of the High School Equalisation Policy in 1974]’, in Hanguk gyoyuk jeongchek-ui hoego-wa jeonmang: gusulsajeok jeopgeun shido [Korean educational policy in retrospect and prospects for the future: oral history aproaches], Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) [Report No. TR 2016–77] (Seoul: KEDI, 2017), 1–148.

³³ ‘Chimat baram [The mothers’ influence]’, Dong-A Ilbo [The Dong A Daily], March 6, 1972.

³⁴ It has been noted that those who were most responsible, besides President Park Jung-Hee, for leading the equalisation reforms were the ministers Kwon Oh-Byoung (1965–1969) and Min Gwan-Shik (1971–1974), and officials in the Ministry of Education. The two ministers, Kwon and Min, were influential politicians who were known to be strongly committed to the cause of equalisation. See Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan’, 9–11.

³⁵ Michael J. Seth, Education Fever: Society, Politics, and the Pursuits of Schooling in South Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 251–2.

³⁶ Enrolment in vocational high schools grew faster than that in academic high schools in the 1960s and the early 1970s; however, this trend was reversed in 1973. See Parvez Hasan and D. C. Rao, Korea: Policy Issues for Long-Term Development [The Report of a Mission Sent to the Republic of Korea by the World Bank] (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 152.

³⁷ Seth, Education Fever, 111–12.

³⁸ ‘Ibshi jaedo-ui ildae hyeokshin: geu uiui-wa munjejeom [Striking innovation in the entry to high school: the significance and problem]’, Dong-A Ilbo [The Dong A Daily], February 28, 1973; ‘(Jae 2 gaehyeok-ui munjejeom [The problems with the second reform: an interview with Minister Min]’, Dong-A Ilbo [The Dong A Daily], March 5, 1973.

³⁹ Korean Ministry of Education, Mungyo 40 nyeonsa [The forty years of educational administration] (Seoul: Ministry of Education, 1988), 392.

⁴⁰ The middle-school equalisation reform was not totally embraced in its initial stage. When the policy was announced, teachers from former elite schools protested by submitting their resignations, and some parents insisted that they would rather send their children to a cram school than to a mediocre neighbourhood school: ‘An Editorial’, Joseon Ilbo [The Chosun Daily], February 11, 1968.

⁴¹ Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan’, 6.

⁴² ‘Shimpandae-ae oreun junghak pyeongjunhwa mushiheom jinhakseng cheot goipshi munjejeom [The problems revealed in the first high school entrance exam after the Middle School Equalisation Policy]’, Dong-A Ilbo [The Dong A Daily], January 4, 1972.

⁴³ Seth, Education Fever, 156.

⁴⁴ Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan’, 2–3.

⁴⁵ During the five years between 1968 and 1973, the number of middle schools and the number of students in the schools increased from 2061 in 1968 to 2634 in 1973, and from 1,523,510 in 1968 to 2,592,071 in 1973, respectively: Park, ‘Haebangihu hakgyogyoyuk’, 195.

⁴⁶ Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan’, 6–8.

⁴⁷ Quoted in ibid., 21.

⁴⁸ Gwan-Shik Min, Hanguk gyoyuk-ui gaeyeok-gwa jinro [The change and prospect for Korean education] (Seoul: Gwangmyeong, 1975), 77–78.

⁴⁹ Emile Durkheim, The Evolution of Educational Thought: Lectures on the Formation and the Development of Secondary Education in France (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), 8, quoted in Gary McCulloch, ‘The History of Secondary Education in History of Education’, History of Education 41 (2012): 26.

⁵⁰ Byeong-Joo Hwang, ‘Gukmin gyoyuk-gwa gukmin mandeulgi [Educating the nation and nation-building]’, in Oh, Daehanminguk gyoyuk 70 nyeon, 389–420.

⁵¹ World Bank, Growth and Prospects of the Korean Economy [Report No. 1489-KO], unpublished report, February 23, 1977; World Bank, Korea: Rapid Growth and Search for New Perspectives [Report No. 2477-KO], unpublished report, May 15, 1979; Parvez Hasan, Korea: Problems and Issues in a Rapidly Growing Economy (Published for the World Bank), (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Hasan and Rao, Korea: Policy Issues for Long-Term Development.

⁵² Former Minister of Education Kim Shin-Il (2006–2008) argued that the educational policy of South Korea only expanded schooling but fell short in achieving quality or equality: Shin-Il Kim, ‘Pyeongdeungjui-wa elitjui gyoyuk-eun gongjon ganeunghanga [Can egalitarianism and elitism coexist in education?]’, in Hanguk jundeung gyoyuk 100 nyeon nyeon [One hundred years of Korean secondary. The 100^th anniversary Commemoration Committee of Gyeonggi High School Education], ed. Jun-Seo Park et al. (Seoul: Hakji-Sa, 2000), 153.

⁵³ The Ministry of Education appointed members, including academics, journalists and educators, and formed a committee on 8 December 1972 to work on the high school entrance policy: Min, Hanguk gyoyuk-ui, 74.

⁵⁴ Due to the short preparation period, various immediate follow-up studies were conducted to improve the policy: Yun-Tae Kim, Jong-Hee Noh, Mu-Seop Kang, Jin-Hwan Jeong and Seung-Kyu Kang, ‘Gogyo pyeongjunhwa pyeongga yeongu [The Evaluation Review on the High School Equalisation Policy]’, [Research Report No. RR 78–63] (Seoul: Korean Educational Development Institute, 1978).

⁵⁵ Quoted in Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan’, 20.

⁵⁶ The attainment rate for high school was 20.3% in 1970, which increased to 44.8% in 1980, 79.4% in 1990 and 89.4% in 2000: Ministry of Education & Korean Educational Development Institute, Gyoyuk tonggae yeonbo [Educational statistics yearbook] (Seoul: Ministry of Education & Korean Educational Development Institute, 1970; 1980; 1990; 2000).

⁵⁷ Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan’, 2–3.

⁵⁸ Hasan and Rao, Korea: Policy Issues for Long-Term Development, 167.

⁵⁹ Seth, Education Fever, 156–7.

⁶⁰ Ki-Seok Kim, Yong-Jae Woo and Cheol-Hee Park, ‘Gyeonggi godeunghakgyo-wa hyeondae hanguksahoe [The Gyeonggi high school and modern Korean society]’, in Park et al., Hanguk jundeung gyoyuk 100 nyeon, 92.

⁶¹ The newly formed 8th district symbolised the birth of the affluent Gangnam as the new centre of Seoul. To develop this area, the government purposefully relocated the popular former elite schools, such as the Gyeonggi High School, the Gyeonggi Girls’ High School, the Seoul High School and the Sukmyeong Girls’ High School, to this area.

⁶² Sung and Lee, ‘Politics and the Practice of School Change’, 239–40.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Ju-Ho Lee, who served as the Minister of Education between 2010 and 2013, was one of the strong opponents of the equalisation policy and later implemented measures to dismantle the policy by creating new elite schools during his office: Sunwoong Kim and Ju-Ho Lee, ‘The Secondary School Equalisation Policy in South Korea’ (unpublished paper, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2003).

⁶⁵ Sung and Lee, ‘Politics and the Practice of School Change’, 239–40.

⁶⁶ Lee, ‘1974 Nyeon gogyo pyeongjunhwa-ae daehan’, 23.

⁶⁷ Mi-Ja Park and Yoonmi Lee, ‘1990 Nyeondaeihu godeung hakgyo pyeongjunhwa jeongchekui jeongewa byeonyong: Pyeongjunhwa jaedoib undongeul jungshimeuro [A study on the evolution of the high-school equalisation policy since the 1990s: focusing on the pro-equalisation movement]’, Gyoyuk Sasang Yeongu [Journal of Korean Educational Ideas] 34, no. 3 (2020): 27–54.

⁶⁸ ‘Woego 33 nyeon, jasago 24 nyeon man-ae sarajinda: Jae 2-ui gogyo pyeongjunhwa [The 33-year old foreign-language high schools and 24-year old autonomous private high schools are to be closed: the second wave of high school equalisation]’, Yonhap News, November 7, 2019.

⁶⁹ The Hyukshin (or hyeokshin) schools may be literally translated as ‘innovative schools’. However, given their underlying philosophy and goals, a better translation would be ‘progressive’ or ‘democratic’ schools. They appear in the Romanised form, ‘Hyukshin’, in official documents. See Jungan Kim, Policies and Practices of Hyukshin Schools in Seoul: Selected Writings [A Work Commissioned by Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education] (Seoul: Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, 2018).

⁷⁰ For the Hyukshin School movement see Kim, Policies and Practices of Hyukshin Schools in Seoul; Youl-Kwan Sung, Yoonmi Lee and Il-Seon Choi, ‘Contradiction, Mediation and School Change: An Analysis of the Pedagogical Practices in the Hyukshin School in South Korea’, KEDI Journal of Educational Policy 13 (2016), 221–44; Sung and Lee, ‘Politics and the Practice of School Change’, 238–52; Lee, ‘A Critical Dialogue’, 965–7.

⁷¹ On 7 November 2019, the South Korean Ministry of Education announced that all independent private schools and specialised schools at the upper secondary level would be abolished by 2025.

⁷² Mitsuhara Tanaka argued that the delayed selection, concentrated at age 18, intensified educational fervour in Korea by raising the stakes of college entrance. This is an interesting observation; however, it does not explain why the partial adoption of early selection through the new selective schools that emerged in the 1990s failed to cool the fervour rather than heating it up. See Mitsuhara Tanaka, ‘Expansion of High School Education: Korea’, in Aizawa et al., High School for All, 107. The selective schools, such as the foreign-language high schools and autonomous private high schools created in the 1990s and 2000s, initially had school-based entrance exams. However, the government intervened to make entrance to these schools less selective, on the grounds that the exams resulted in excessive competition and demands on shadow education.

⁷³ Sung and Lee, ‘Politics and the Practice of School Change’.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Park and Lee, ‘1990 Nyeondaeihu godeung hakgyo pyeongjunhwa’, 47–9; Lee and Sung, ‘Perceptions of the East Asian Model of Education’.

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Yoonmi Lee

Yoonmi Lee is Professor of Education at Hongik University, Seoul, Korea. She received her PhD at the Department of Educational Policy Studies (majoring in comparative history of education), University of Wisconsin-Madison. She served as President of the Korean Association for History of Education from 2011 to 2012. Her research interests include comparative and transnational history of modern education, education and state formation, cultural politics of education, particularly in the East Asian context. Her publication includes Modern Education, Textbooks, and the Image of the Nation: Politics of Modernization and Nationalism in Korean education 1880-1910 (New York: Routledge, 2000) and articles published in international journals such as Paedagogica Historica, Oxford Education Review, Educational Philosophy and Theory, and Curriculum Inquiry.