South-Korea ranks high in educational equity

[bauci.livejournal.com]

South Korea emerges as the nation with the most equitable education system, according to a new report by the World Economic Forum titled Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2015. It assesses three kinds of equity in education – access, quality and outcomes – and covers everything from pre-school to vocational training.

The results have been classified by the World Bank income group, which may come as no surprise given the strong correlation between economic development and education. Northern Europe and Asia dominate the advanced economies, with Japan joining South Korea and Singapore in the top three. At number 24, the United States appears some way down the advanced-economy scale, trailing Australia, France and Iceland.

>Eastern Europe scores well in both upper-middle and lower-middle economies, while the countries of Latin America, as a regional cluster, are falling behind on educational equality.





One day you too can be chaebol? Do you agree with the results? How did your own country do?

Source: Weforum.org

Comments

[dio-elaclaire.livejournal.com]

glad to see poland so high :)

[nadumolla.livejournal.com]

should have migrated to canada gdi

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

meh, coulda been better. But between Netherlands and Switzerland seems like a good spot imo.

RE: :/

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

Preach it TBH. Teaching my elementary children the lesson on "What time do you go to bed?" Was sad because they all went to bed later than I did, at like midnight. These are 5th and 6th Graders like...

I was walking home slightly drunk one time at 10PM on a Saturday and an elementary kid passed me with his book bag. On a Saturday!! Wtf.

Nevermind the high school kids who live at their schools because they study from 7am to 1am, then go back to do homework and get barely any sleep. I asked them "what do you want to do?" And they all said "rest." Or "sleep." Or "play video games." It's depressing.

Korea only has high scores because they are basically forced to study - the society "encourages" hagwons and high test scores - and basically shuns those who aren't book smart. My husband (a Korean) was told he isn't smart at all by numerous people because he didn't do well in school - Nevermind the fact that he's extremely good at trade things like fixing computers, cars, carpentry, electronics, etc.

A lot of people are throwing around "Hell Korea" as a way to describe the current society and it's so true. It's a shame these children have no childhoods and only know books, studying and tests.

Re: :/

[strawberry-efeu.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's actually kind of terrible... I mean I teach kids as young as 5 and a lot of them are stuck at school the whole day because their parents are working all the time. But even from the age of 6 and 7 there are a lot of kids who can't stay awake in class because they went to bed at 10 or 11. And if I ask them if they got to go play in the snow or if they got to go play somewhere (anywhere!) they usually just give me this confused look and then tell me about their taekwondo academy or art academy. It's really sad and it just makes me end up feeling bad that I asked at all.

And the fact that I'm teaching 3rd grade kids a text that's practically university level... like of course it's just going to end with frustration for everyone... they don't even know what the vocabulary means in Korean, much less what it means in English.

Re: :/

[chibi-rei.livejournal.com]

Agreeing to everything here tbh.

Do kids get results? Yeah but at what cost? Among other things so many kids have vision problems, teacher friends telling me how their kids are losing hair/getting gray hair from stress, not enough sleep, bullies ---

I loved my students but I always felt sorry for them. :\

[hipployta.livejournal.com]

With the way they handle access to schools and the whole hagwon situation I find Korea's result surprising. Then even with a stellar education the job applications here in Korea can still ask for your Parent's background and photos and who knows what else so I'm not sure I believe the upward mobility opportunities.

Kids spend so much time in school here and it seems really unbalanced

[benihime99.livejournal.com]

Can't help but noticed how the top ranking countries are pretty homogeneous

I'd be interested to know how they make those rankings.
They mentionned access, quality and outcomes
I'm surprised with the first 2
Countries were education (especially University) is free aren't ranking, and the leaders in term of "TOP universities/schools" are not in the top 10 either.

Does"outcome" take into consideration unemployment rates and whether or not one would find work in the area they studied?

Does equal means Equal opportunity?

[gathyou.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about this specific study but usually 'outcome' is more about the number of PHD's and publications made with the university (which is one reason why our universities/private schools always do so badly lol since most publication are made with an independant 'research center')

I went to the WeForum website and I haven't found access to their data/criterias for this study yet, it's not really transparent

Addendum

[benihime99.livejournal.com]

Does equal means Equal opportunity?
According to the numbers given by the UNICEF in 2014 Japan and Korea got some pretty bad scores on the gender gap (for instance)

[yohan94.livejournal.com]

Countries were education (especially University) is free aren't ranking

don't some of the countries on this list have free education/uni?

[bauci.livejournal.com]

Countries were education (especially University) is free aren't ranking

Studying in uni is free in Estonia.

[kaninasan.livejournal.com]

Since they mention PISA i'm guessing this is just primary and secondary schools, not universities

[violoncelliste.livejournal.com]

Poland always does well in polls about education and i honestly don't know why. and not in a 'the system sucks!!' kinda way, more like, it's pretty average? how bad is it in other countries lol

[gathyou.livejournal.com]

The point I find interesting about this study is how they parted the world in four categories. Usually low income countries gets completely drawn in studies like this one.
But I wished they would be more transparent about their data and which criterias were selected to have these results. Ranking change drastically whether you focus on one point or the other.

[typhlogirl.livejournal.com]

Meh, Australia always ranks pretty well in these sorts of things. We aren't the best, but we're far from the worst. I enjoyed my education and I love how our government pays for our degrees (we have to pay them back, but there's no interest and you don't have to start paying anything back until you're earning over $40,000 a year).

Scandanavia and Eastern Asia always slay on these things (I didn't expect to see Estonia here, though! I love that country)

[n-ics.livejournal.com]

IA, I am so thankful we don't have to pay our university fees upfront and being in debt for it isn't something I'm too concerned about.

I also really enjoyed the education I received at my catholic high school. I learnt so much about different religions, ethics, personal development/awareness, ways to protect myself as a woman etc. I feel like they're really invaluable and should be taught at all schools, which doesn't seem to be the case.

[phililen3.livejournal.com]

My country is a lost cause.

[infadel-x.livejournal.com]

I have a friend from my home country doing 1 year of high school and her bachelor in SK telling me the two education systems are EXACTLY the same but we're only 4.81 so that tells you how accurate this thing is. I attended classes similar to hakwons when I was in school, but I only started during secondary and the latest it lasts is 9/10pm and between state schools and hakwons I had enough time to finish my homework ~11pm and had time to play, see friends on the weekend and stuff. SK education system is wack.

[921227.livejournal.com]

These numbers don't mean a lot when we don't have the data they're based from, but ok
And the US isn't on here, which doesn't surprise me. The educational system is kinda crappy and sooooo uneven as far as quality goes. I personally have had the fortune to attend private education in the US and I know that's made a big difference for me.

[kaninasan.livejournal.com]

The US is mentioned:

At number 24, the United States appears some way down the advanced-economy scale, trailing Australia, France and Iceland

[kaninasan.livejournal.com]

The South Korean system terrifies me tbh, I feel so bad for these kids who do nothing but study all day and get no playtime or sleep.

Surprised to see my country up there bc whenever these PISA surveys come out we're usually in the middle, below the countries we like to compare ourselves to and everyone always acts like it's a disaster. Our system is very different from Korea's, bc there's very little competition since the national uni has to admit everyone who qualifies, so ppl can get away with not studying very much until they get to uni. But we do really well in tertiary education and probably have a disproportionate amount of students at the top unis in the world (from my secondary school class of 23 there are now 2 who have phds from MIT, one phd from Princeton and two phds from Oxford). So the final outcome is better than the PISA results say, bc that's a survey of 15 year olds, not 25 year olds who are at the end of their education.

And in our system there are no hakwons, and kids have free time and do sports and go to music school and after they turn 13 they have summer jobs. These are things that imo are vital to the development of kids, having varied interests and working experience makes ppl better students and better employees in the future.

[bauci.livejournal.com]

Which country is that?

[demonology81.livejournal.com]

Wow Singapore is second O__O

[bomsnose.livejournal.com]

Yeah well, I'm sad, but not at all surprised about Hungary. The charities I support there have all to do with education.
Thing is the government works really hard to destroy the remains of what was not so long a decent education system, cause empty heads are always easier to handle. As I'm typing this, Hungarian teachers and their supporters are gearing up for demonstrations.
Like... It's one thing that they re-write the curriculum to suit the goverment better, but then they close off funds entirely from some institutions. No heating in some places, etc.
Bla bla treasure your education systems while it's good.

[amandaplan.livejournal.com]

the us pre-college system is pretty unequal and sad. props to korea for scoring so high!

[anewsymphony.livejournal.com]

LMAO. this means bugger all when children don't learn anything at their actual schools, and parents spend their entire earnings sending their kids to hakwons and getting extra lessons for their kids, teaching them stuff that's like a year ahead of what they're meant to be learning in school. and what does that cost? A LOT OF MONEY.

what's even more laughable is the vicious cycle of:
richer parents spend shit ton of money on kid's education to land them in a good uni > those kids end up in companies like samsung as adults > companies like samsung give the most generous employee benefits & pay, if you get far enough ahead or end up getting sent abroad as an expat, the company will basically pay for your living costs and your children's PRIVATE education > the cycle repeats itself. especially since any family with enough money will choose to send their kids abroad to study instead of educating them in korea itself, cos that's seen to give them the best chances in life later on.

so if 'educational equality' is meant to link to actual social mobility, then this whole thing is a bit of a joke.

[chimpansee.livejournal.com]

One of the oddest things someone once told me about the Korean school system is that the reason kids don't speak English well is because they basically don't learn to speak the language, but rather get taught to recite various phrases/learn texts by heart. That's just so baffling to me because... what's the point?

South-Korea being praised for this is laughable. The faults in their educational system are not at all hard to spot.