Elite schools to stay afloat until law revision

By Kim Bo-eun

Private elite high schools will likely survive for the time being until related laws are revised. Five such schools passed a re-evaluation which has allowed them to keep their status, the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) said Wednesday.

Under the current system, autonomous schools are evaluated on a regular basis to maintain their status. The schools are a subject of contention amid the Moon Jae-in administration’s drive to turn them into regular schools.

Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon said they should be abolished not on the basis of evaluations, but through revision of the law.

“I learned changing the schools into regular schools through the current evaluation system is impossible and unrealistic,” Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon said at a press conference at which he announced the evaluation results of five schools in Seoul.

Seoul Foreign Language High School, Kyungmoon High School, Sehwa Girls’ High School, Janghoon High School and Younghoon International Middle School received passing marks.

The five schools were re-evaluated after receiving failing marks in a 2015 evaluation, which subjected them to cancellation of their status with a two-year suspension.

“The education office did its best to strictly evaluate the schools but faced difficulty because there were limits of not being able to surpass the framework set by the government in evaluation criteria. There is a limit to canceling the status of autonomous schools by the superintendent's evaluation, while leaving the law on the schools as it is,” Cho said.

He proposed the schools be abolished by revising ordinances in the law on elementary and secondary education on the establishment and admissions of autonomous schools.

“The government, as soon as the deputy prime minister for social affairs is appointed, must clearly establish a policy by reviewing the pledge to simplify the high school system,” he said.

“I request it seek a means to switch all autonomous schools into regular schools through revision of the law, rather than switching them individually based on evaluation.”

The superintendent said once the education ministry’s roadmap of the high school system is laid out, the education office will push forward with the plan while collecting public opinions.

Abolishing elite high schools is aimed at equalizing education at the high school level, as the prestigious schools have become a means to gain admission into top universities, intensifying private education at the middle school level to enter the elite high schools.