By Lee Hyo-sik
The number of middle and high school students here will shrink by 30 percent in 2020 from this year as more Koreans are choosing not to have children, according to a recent academic paper.
It is also projected that the number of elementary school students will decline by as much as 17 percent over the same period, adding the nation should increase the number of teachers by 5,000 every year, despite the falling number of students, to provide the same quality of public education as advanced countries do.
A Hanyang University research team, led by Prof. Lee Young of the department of economics and finance, said given the rapidly falling birthrate, Korean middle and high school students will total 2.64 million in 2020, down 30 percent from the current 3.81 million.
The number of elementary students is also expected to drop by 16.9 percent to 2.59 million in 2020 from this year’s 3.12 million. In 2012, the figure will dip below 3 million for the first time since the government began tallying related statistics in 1965.
However, the research team said the country should add more teachers to elementary and secondary schools over the next two decades, despite the falling number of youngsters and teens, if it wants to lower the student-to-teacher ratio to those of OECD countries.
``In 2008, the OECD average student-to-teacher ratio was 16.4 in elementary school, 13.7 in middle school and 13.5 in high school. If Korea wants to cut its current ratio to the OECD’s 2008 level by 2020, it has to increase the number of elementary school teachers by up to 5,000 each year and secondary school teachers by another 5,000,’’ Lee said.
He projected that if elementary school teachers are maintained at the current level of 139,448 over the next two decades, the students-to-teacher ratio will be 18.27. If secondary school teachers are kept at the current 135,764, the student-to-teacher ratio will be 14.25 in 2020.