A group of students head to a bus for their trip home after finishing private lessons at “hagwon” cram school in this Korea Times file photo. The current curfew on hagwon operations after 11 p.m. will stay in place thanks to a ruling by the Constitutional Court. |
By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
The Constitutional Court, Thursday, ruled in support of education authorities on their current policy of limiting operation hours of private cram schools or “hagwon.”
A group of hagwon operators along with parents and students in Seoul and Busan last year filed a petition with the court, claiming the curfew violated educational rights of parents and students.
With the court’s decision, the curfew for private cram schools at nightwill remain in force,which is being enforced as part of an effort to curtail runaway private education costs.
Currently, education offices in each city and province are allowed to set operating hours of hagwon by ordinances and their business hours differ by region.
The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education plans to ban private cram schools from running after 10 p.m., while Busan Metropolitan Office of Education sets the same curfew for elementary and middle school students, but increases it to 11 p.m. for high school students.
It has been hard for education authorities to supervise and control the huge number of private education institutes. This year, the government started to crack down on those that violated business hours, offering a financial reward to citizens who reported such cases.
Early this year, Kwak Seung-jun, the head of the Presidential Council for Future and Vision, had tried to legalize a ban on private cram schools regarding operation hours, so that all city and provincial education offices set the same curfew at 10 p.m.
At the same time, he proposed mobilizing police to enforce the law.
However, his plans faced opposition from lawmakers and the education ministry. Also, both governing and opposition parties criticized him for the remarks, claiming he was not in a position to comment on education reform and the plan was made without consulting the ministry.
The ministry and lawmakers of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) reached an agreement on the current curfew, which allows each education office to set its own according to regional situations, but education authorities have been ordered to tightly supervise any irregularities by hagwon.
At the same time, schools were asked to improve the quality of their education. In this regard, the government plans to provide students with more after-school programs and introduce a teacher assessment system that rewards those who receive good scores and punishes those who are poorly evaluated.
The government has designated runaway costs for private lessons for students aspiring to enter top high schools and colleges as a disease that sickens the nation.
A raft of policies are being introduced to fight it.
In the latest effort, a close aide of President Lee Myung-bak is pushing for the abolition of foreign-language high schools, calling them the source of all evil.
These elitist schools send a large number of graduates to top universities, so middle school students are taking private lessons at an exorbitant cost to enter them.
kswho@koreatimes.co.kr
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