New Zealand experts advise Korea on education reform

By Philip Iglauer

At a recent conference here in Seoul, New Zealand and Korean education experts exchanged their know-how with the aim of helping Korea reform the way it teaches its youth.

Experts from Korea’s 16 offices of education convened in Seoul with education professionals from New Zealand for a two-day conference, the “2011 KEDI-ERO International Seminar on School Evaluation & 2011 International Training Course” at the Korean Federation of Teachers Association Wednesday to help Korea do away with a top-down, centralized approach toward education.

Korea is currently reforming its education system from an extremely hierarchical system to one where localities have more autonomy.

“The role the New Zealand government is playing in Korea’s process of reform is by sharing information of how we do it,” said Onnuri Lee, Education Officer at the New Zealand Embassy. “While recognizing there are differences, we can share what we’ve learned from a heavily decentralized approach toward education.”

There was considerable agreement among an international coterie of education officials that Korea needs to start rethinking how it’s doing the job of teaching its kids, but that certainly does not include doing away with Korea’s national college entrance exam, notorious among the nation’s high schoolers for demanding all-night studying and long hours at test-prep cram schools.

New Zealand is perhaps the perfect country to learn about a decentralized educational approach, too.

“New Zealand may be the most decentralized system in the world,” said Graham Stoop, chief review officer and chief executive of New Zealand’s Education Review office (ERO).

Improving school performance was the focus at the conference, jointly organized by ERO and Korean Educational Institute Evaluation (KEDI). The work there will inform changes in Korea that will augment to current heavy focus on the college entrance exam.

The agency charged with handling all matters concerned with the test, Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE), was not on hand at the conference. The institute, which deals with evaluating student performance in the class room, as well as other issues, is working with ERO to find those alternatives in order to compliment Korea’s national college test with other ways of evaluating student performance.

Autonomous boards of trustees have full authority over every aspect of the school’s management from curriculum to its lunch menu. There is one such board for each of New Zealand’s 2,600 schools, accommodating the country’s 765,000 students and 52,000 teachers. New Zealand’s seven education-related government ministries, including the ERO, provide support to these boards in the form of advice, evaluation and technical support.

“Boards of Trustees are elected and handle all aspects of education in their localities,” Stoop said. “Each school gets evaluated every three years.

New Zealand education experts looked to Korea’s strength in quantitative indicators as an area of improvement in their system. Advantages of a decentralized approach include the ability of local schools to respond changes faster. Schools can also tailor curricula to student needs better when they have greater autonomy from the central education authority.