UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES DILIMAN

Raniel R. Billones

Shadow Education:
The Demand of Private Tutoring in South Korea

Maria Cecilia T. Medina, Ph. D.

Asian Center
University of the Philippines Diliman

Date of Submission:
January 2022
 SHADOW EDUCATION:
THE DEMAND OF PRIVATE TUTORING IN SOUTH KOREA

RANIEL R. BILLONES

A Final Paper
Submitted to the
Asian Center
University of the Philippines Diliman
In partial fulfilment of the requirements
for Asian Studies 201-A (Modern Asia)

JANUARY 2022

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Education System in South Korea …………………………….. 4

B. Demand for Education in South Korea …………………………….. 6

C. Private Tutoring: History and Research …………………………….. 8

II. FRAMEWORK …………………………….………………………. 11

III. CONCLUSION …………………………….………………………. 12

IV. REFERENCES …………………………….………………………. 15

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I. Introduction
A. Education System in South Korea
The Korean public school system is divided into three parts: primary

school for 6 years, middle school for 3 years, and high school for 3 years.

Probably approximately 5% of Korea's secondary schools were coeducational

in 1996. The percentage of inclusive classrooms has grown by about 10%.

However, at many coeducational high schools, classrooms are still split by

gender. Because the curriculum has been standardized, both male and female

students now study electronics and home economics. (Diem, et. al., 2021)

Primary education or Chodeung Hakgyo lasts six years (Grades 1-

6), it is free and designed for students ages six to twelve. Between the ages of

5 and 7, students can enroll in a primary school or Kukmin Hakgyo. (NUFFIC,

2015) Moral education, Korean language, social studies, mathematics,

science, physical education, music, fine arts, and practical arts are the nine

major disciplines covered in the elementary curriculum. (Diem, et. al., 2021)

After finishing primary school, lower secondary education

(Junghakgyo) is available in a middle school (junior high school) and comprises

the first years of secondary education. This stage of the educational system is

part of the required curriculum. It lasts three years (Grades 7-9) and is designed

for students ages 12/13 to 15/16. Admissions is provided without the need for

an entrance test. Upper secondary education (Godeung Hakgyo), sometimes

known as high school education, is the 3 years of secondary schooling that

follow (Grades 10-12). The curriculum is designed for students aged 15 to 18.

There are several sorts of high schools: general high schools, vocational high

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schools, science high schools, and special high schools such as foreign

language schools and art high schools. There are expenses connected with

completing a high school education or the school fees. (NUFFIC, 2015)

The curriculum includes 12 core or obligatory studies, as well as

elective and extra - curricular activities. Vocational and academic secondary

schools are the two types of high schools. In 1995, two - thirds of pupils

attended academic high schools, while 38 percent attended vocational high

schools. A limited number went to specialized high schools where they studied

science, the humanities, linguistics, and other subjects. (Diem, et. al., 2021)

Admission to higher education, among other things, required passing

the higher education entrance test known as the College Scholastic Aptitude

Test (CSAT or Daehak Suhak Neungluk Siheom). This test, which was created

in 2004, is overseen by KICE and is held every November. Students may take

some or all the examinations in the appropriate academic area of their choice.

Many students hire excellent private tutors to study for this assessment, which

implies that they have little interest in extra-curricular activities in secondary

school and prefer to overlook courses that are not evaluated in the CSAT.

(NUFFIC, 2015)

At the higher institutions level, Korea's universities have a less

enviable worldwide image; nonetheless, the country was rated 22nd out of 50

countries in the Universitas 21 network of research institutions' 2018 Ranking

of National Higher Education Systems. Meanwhile, Korea was recently placed

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12th out of 35 nations in the Economist Intelligence Unit's "Worldwide

Educating for the Future Index," tied with the United States. (Mani, et. al., 2018)

Universities (industrial universities, teacher-training universities,

broadcast and correspondence universities, cyber universities) and colleges

(junior colleges, cyber colleges, technical colleges, colleges in company,

graduate school colleges) are the primary providers of higher education, along

with various other research and other institutions. National institutions (financed

and controlled by the MOE), public institutions (funded and overseen by local

management boards), and private institutions are distinguished (funded and

managed by individuals or organizations). Seoul National University (Seoul

Daehakgyo), Korea University (Korea Daehakgyo), and Yonsei University

(Yonsei Daehakgyo), together abbreviated to SKY, are the three (3) most

prominent institutions in the country. National universities have a strong

reputation as well. (NUFFIC, 2015)

B. Demand for Education in South Korea

During the Joseon Dynasty in 1392, Confucianism was accepted as

Korea's state philosophy. Teaching and learning were only available to the

political elite, who made up around 15% of the population at the time

(Sorensen, 1994 as cited in Thompson, 2018). Throughout Japan's

colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945, the country required trained

instructors as well as a universal school system. (Thompson, 2018). The South

Korea which contains 16 administrative divisions, has been in existence since

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1948. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the Korean peninsula was divided

between a Northern state (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), which

gained Soviet Union assistance, and a Southern democratic state was

renamed the Republic of Korea. (NUFFIC, 2015)

The Education Act of 1948 of South Korea saw the introduction of an

education system that was very similar to the Chinese system. Financial aid

from nations such as the United States helped the Republic of Korea's

industrialization, that had an impact on the organization of the education

sector. The Ministry of Education has been in charge of all aspects of

education in South Korea. (NUFFIC, 2015)

The Basic Education Law of 1949 called for 6 years of free education

beginning at the age of seven, 3 years of noncompulsory middle school with

the option of paying tuition, 3 years of noncompulsory high school with the

option of collecting tuition, and four years of college with tuition fee. Because

of the rising demand for public education in the 1950s, classrooms became

overcrowded, prompting the development of rigorous admission tests for

middle and high school to help limit enrollment numbers. The middle school

entrance test was discontinued in 1969 in an attempt to make middle school

mandatory, but fierce rivalry for admission to the best high schools and

colleges remains, and the notion of "examination hell" persists today.

According to an OECD survey on Korean education, "Korean higher

education has strong participation and achievement rates." The percentage of

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25 to 34 years old with higher education is the biggest in the OECD (69%,

compared with an average of 42%)". (OECD, 2016)

The South Korean government promotes the country's education

system because it is seen as an effective and necessary instrument for

cultivating national power. (Kim-Renaud, 2005, as cited in Bermeo, 2014)

People have made remarkable progress in making education available to all

residents. Nonetheless, what has shocked education specialists worldwide is

the relatively unique reality that the South Korean education system has been

adapted to the needs of economic development and considerable reforms.

C. Private Tutoring: History and Research

South Korea, like many other countries, has witnessed rapid

economic and social growth in recent decades, putting a strain on the country's

ability to allocate educational funds fairly and equitably.

Private tutoring, described as non-free academic topic coaching

delivered by private instructor in addition to formal educational system, is a

booming industry in many countries, particularly in South Korea. (Choi, 2010)

Although private tutoring has been seen all across the world, the level of reality

in South Korea is rather remarkable. Despite the rapid development of the

formal education system and the continued deployment of public funds, private

tutoring is rising in Korea. There'll be a lot of research to enable us understand

how private tutoring influences the Korean educational system. We also saw

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some K-drama in which some affluent families are concerned about their

children's education, primarily in "Shadow Education" or private tutoring.

The study of Huang (2013) cited more on primary and secondary

students these days seek academic tutoring, questions were raised as to

whether after-school tutoring can raise test scores without increasing student

variance, and whether students of different ability levels may benefit more than

others from after-school tutoring. To answer these questions, the researchers

used a fixed-effects model to evaluate the distributions of student performance

across nations with varying levels of after-school tutoring involvement, while

adjusting for country-level unobserved heterogeneity. Participating in either

mathematics or science tutoring after school has been shown to enhance

national average performance without increasing student performance

dispersion. Tutoring benefits low-performing students more than high-

performing pupils in science. Tutoring benefits high-performing pupils more

than low-performing kids in math.

According to the findings of Park et. al. (2011) the parental

participation and child's schools in a range of circumstances can give useful

insights of how the links between parental involvement and student outcomes

rely on unique family and educational contexts. Korean education is notable

for its high prevalence of private tutoring, which not only imposes a financial

burden on parents but also necessitates parents' effort and time in hiring the

suitable type of private tutoring for their children and keeping track of their

student achievement by interacting with private tutors. Aspects of Korean

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education are presented, as well as the larger implications of these results

outside the local setting, in which private tutoring becomes an essential tool

for parents to improve their child's future.

Based on the research of Lee and Shouse (2011), the extensive use

of "shadow education" is a major policy concern in East Asia, particularly in

South Korea, where legislators see it as detrimental to academic and financial

equality. Unlike earlier research, which has focused on functional reasons, this

study has taken an integrated perspective, investigating how students'

aspiration for distinguished admission impacts their parents' expenditure on

shadow education. It will be around this "prestige orientation" that strongly

influences parent purchasing, particularly among students of lower income

status, and has a great impact on pupils who have the least chance of

prestigious matriculation. Such data suggest that Korean shadow teaching

serves representation as well as functional reasons.

Based on Byun, et. al. (2012), the idea of cultural capital has proven

beneficial in understanding educational systems in Western countries, and

contemporary research strives to extend similar insights to the different

educational systems of other geographic locations. Using data from the 2000

Programme for International Student Assessment, the authors investigated the

links between parental socioeconomic level, cultural capital, and children's

academic success in South Korea. To explore how institutional aspects of

South Korean education impact the influence of cultural capital in academic

achievement, South Korea was compared to Japan, France, and the United

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 States. According to the findings, family SES had a favorable influence on both

parental objectified cultural capital and children's embodied cultural capital in

South Korea, which is consistent with research from other countries.

Furthermore, in South Korea, parental embodied cultural capital had a

favorable influence on children's academic performance. In South Korea,

however, children's internalized cult capital had a detrimental influence on

academic success after adjusting for other factors, in contrast to other nations.

The authors emphasized numerous institutional elements of South Korean

education, such as a standard national curriculum, a heavy emphasis on exam

preparation, and widespread shadow education, which may reduce the

influence of children's embedded cultural capital on academic success.

II. FRAMEWORK

While there is a growing number of works that explores the factors for

private tutors, few investigations have fully and openly examined ideas

underlying parents' and students' judgment processes surrounding the usage

of private tutors (Byun et al., 2018).

Some research focused on environmental factors such as social &

cultural background, and school-related features such as student–teacher ratio

and curriculum packing, teacher qualities and family characteristics that affect

involvement in private tutoring. (Zhang, 2014) Additionally, a reproduction

model of family decision making reveals that elite families pursue shadow

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 education for better academic possibilities to transfer on their elite position to

their children. (Stevenson and Baker, 1992)

The concept of school choice served as a conceptual foundation for the

investigation of private tutor. This idea is more obviously applicable to the

college selection business (McDonough, 1994), which refers to parents finding

techniques to improve their children's competitiveness, in order for their

children to get admission to certain universities (Davies, 2004).

III. CONCLUSION

For various reasons, Korea is a fascinating research about the private

tutoring topic. For the Koreans, private tutoring is widely used. Approximately

three-quarters of elementary and secondary pupils receive private tutoring

class. According to Nam (2007) as cited in Kim, et. al. (2010), the total

household expenditure on private tutoring in 2006 was around 24 Trillion

Korean Won or 2.79 percent of GDP. As stated by the Education at a Glance

(2005) by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD), Korea spent 3.5 percent of GDP on elementary, intermediate, and

non-tertiary postsecondary education in 2003. (OECD, 2005)

Second, South Korea has evolved significantly over the last five

decades in terms of educational expansion and economic progress,

transitioning from a very impoverished to an industrialized nation. As a result,

it offers to investigate the dynamic interaction between formal education and

private tutoring during a time of rapid school development. In relation to this,

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Kim and Choi (2015) raises concerns about the disparity between international

organizations' appreciation for Korean education and Koreans' discontent with

their education. The report highlights higher education inequality as the

primary cause of the disparity. They examine the historical developments in

South Korea's education system over the last few decades, concentrating on

the unrestrained expansion of higher education, to trace the origins of the

current problem of educational disparity and excessive struggle for status. In

doing so, the study demonstrates how aggregate decisions made by

individuals and families, as well as the political trends of the previous five

decades, have influenced public policy surrounding academic stratification in

South Korea.

The predicted economic benefits of education, which is closely tied to

the last reason listed, may have an impact on the demand for private tutors.

The greater the returns to education, the greater the motivation to pursue

measures that increase the likelihood of attaining higher levels of education.

University graduates' compared salaries in Korea are comparable to the OECD

average (OECD, 2009).

Next, amidst the fact that government has constantly risen the amount

of budget fund allocations through education sector and has tried numerous

public interest steps to minimize the practice of private tutoring, the amount

spent on private tutoring has been soaring faster than the growth of wages of

middle-class Korean. This component that has been identified as a cause of

shadow schooling is one's cultural background (Bray and Kwok, 2003 as cited

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in Choi, 2010). Communities with Confucian traditions appear to value

education as a personal growth tool and the primary social movement process.

Lastly, the government has statistical data on private tutoring, which has

been one of the most controversial topics in Korean education reform and

society. According to Choi (2010), to grasp the scope of the private

tutorial issues in Korean society, consider former President Kim Dae-Jung's

proclaimed in his 1998 investiture address to relieve Korean family of the

private tutors' pressure. Since the 1980s, all Korean administrations have

attempted to minimize private tutorials. Nonetheless, the implemented

methods have been far from successful, ranging from absolute restriction of

private tutorials (1980) to public in-school provision of private tutoring for low-

scorers (1984). Most of these strategies have been designed to alleviate the

symptoms of private tutors instead of cure its root causes or making an

inaccurate diagnosis of the issue.

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Byun, S. Y., Chung, H. J., and Baker, D. P. (2018). “Global patterns of the
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Choi, Álvaro. (2010). “Analysis of private tutoring decisions in Korea: A game

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