English Immersion Villages

It’s Urgent to Improve Education Quality, Financial Health

English immersion villages are suffering from difficulties in their operation due to a falling number of visitors and widening deficits. Some of them might be shut down if they fail to hammer out radical measures to attract more students and ensure financial stability. It is regrettable that English immersion towns face such a gloomy future. Only a few years have passed since Seoul City and other local administrations rushed to build such villages to help young students learn English more easily and effectively without taking private tutoring or going abroad.

English immersion villages are intended to provide settings similar to English-speaking towns so that primary, middle and high school students can acquire practical English skills as if they were in the U.S. and other Anglophone countries. As a growing number of students go abroad for English learning, municipal and provincial governments joined a race to set up immersion towns. Candidates running for a mayoral or governor position often promised to create immersion villages for English learning. After elected, they allocated a huge sum of money to keep their campaign promises, creating a boom for English immersion towns. At the beginning, the central government welcomed the creation of immersion villages. However, policymakers express concerns about the overheated boom for them.

Sohn Hak-kyu, former Gyeonggi governor, spearheaded the immersion town project during his 2002-2006 tenure. Under his leadership, the province set up two English immersion villages in Ansan and Paju, respectively in 2004 and 2006. It plans to open the third one in Yangpyeong next year. The Paju town drew keen public attention with its luxury European-style buildings and modern education facilities. The province invested nearly 100 billion won ($108 million) in the Paju campus alone with its annual operation cost standing at 15 billion won ($16 million). Critics claim that such a huge investment is waste of taxpayers’ money, raising a question about the educational effects of immersion villages. To cope with rising deficits, the province plans to hand over the management of the Ansan camp to a private English education institute, while directly managing the Paju town.

Things are not much different in Seoul. The municipal government operates two immersion villages _ one in Pungnap-dong, southeastern Seoul, and the other in Suyu-dong, northern Seoul. The villages suffer from snowballing deficits as the city suspended its financial support to them starting this year. The number of students attending their English learning programs declined significantly as more and more schools operate small-scale English immersion programs at their campuses.

It is urgent for immersion villages to diversify their English training programs and raise their education quality to attract more students. They also must work out programs to regain their financial health.