The Korean school system has not changed since the creation of the education law. In July, the Ministry of Education (MOE) suggested lowering school enrollment age from 6 to 5. There had already been discussions about it during the previous Roh Moo-hyun, Lee Myung-bak, and Park Geun-hye governments, but it failed to make social consensus despite being publicized. The new system can start in 2025 if it smoothly proceeds and it is the first time to change the school system in 76 years after the enactment of the education law. The MOE suggested revision of the policy considering welfare for the socially weak and severe low birth rate and aging of the overall population in Korea. However, many people have concern about effectiveness of the policy. Most of the public even demanded the policy be withdrawn. Accordingly, professor Park Soon-ae who had served as the Minister of Education & Deputy Prime Minister (Park) stepped down from the two positions on August 8^th. Let's look into the new policy more in depth, including its pros and cons, and the public response with CAH.

The Background of “Sending 5-Year-Olds to School” and Expected Effects

On July 29^th, the MOE proposed the school system change to send 5-year-olds to school, not 6-year-olds, via the New Administration’s Work Plan to president Yoon Suk-yeol (Yoon). The MOE explained the purposes and advantages of this policy as follows. It aims to reduce the educational inequality as the state helps the socially weak in current policy’s blind spot with difficulty to get childcare support belong to the public education system. The former Minister of Education and Deputy Prime Minister Park emphasized its advantages mentioning the research result that the effect of investing in education of infants & elementary school students is 16 times greater than that of adults. The new school system will allow 17-year-olds to enter universities or go out into the job market while maintaining the present school system of 12 years (elementary school for 6 years, middle school for 3 years, high school for 3 years) by advancing the enrollment year from 6 to 5. According to the MOE, it is also positive that the youth can more quickly enter the workforce and labor can transfer to workforce early as the parental childcare period decreases in society with severe low birth rate and aging population. Also, the earlier entering into society of the youth can put marriage and reproductive aging forward in the long term. Park announced the plans of the policy herself; “Demand Survey to the Public in 2022”∙”Present a Tentative Plan in 2023”∙”Start a Demonstration in 2024”∙”Implementation on a National Scale in 2025.” Then, the MOE organized a task force in August and said that it would make plans for it while listening to relevant experts and parents carefully. In addition, the MOE presented a plan to control the number of student intake by increasing the range of age to enter school by 25% for 4 years from 2025. This means that for the first year children born in 2018, as well as those born in the first three months of 2019 will be admitted to school. The following year admissions will include students born in “from April 2019 to June 2020,” and so on, until school admissions have caught up.

Concerns about “Sending 5-Year-Olds to School”

Problems in the Process of Promoting “Sending 5-Year-Olds to School”

Firstly, this school system change was not only unaddressed on Yoon’s state affairs and presidential election pledge, but also not officially discussed with the MOE. No opinions from parents, students, and teachers were gathered during the process of putting forward the policy. It means that the decision was made arbitrarily without social discussion. Park later admitted a lack of process for gathering official opinions at the press conference on August 1^st. Song Hyunseok, the head of People’s livelihood Economy Research Institute and who was the policy advisor of Kim Sang-gon, the former Minister of Education, said that there would generally be interior discussion at the MOE with notice system for 3 years before making an educational policy. Also, he added that numerous discussions, research for persuasion, and reflecting opinions of kindergarten & Metropolitan and Provincial Offices of Education are essential to the scale policy like this school system change before reporting to the president. These procedures can be condensed if the policy went through sufficient verifications during the primary elections like the presidential election, but this new proposal change did not do so. Second of all, this policy lacks professional understanding and research. Park was a public administration scholar with little knowledge in educational policy and Jang Sang-yoon (Jang), the Vice Minister of Education had worked in the Office for Government Policy Coordination. Lee Sang-won, the Assistant Secretary had worked in Ministry of Economy and Finance, neither heavily related to education. In addition, the amendment of “Elementary and Secondary Education Act[1]” is indispensable at least until 2024 for lowering the school age nationally from 2025 with MOE’s plan. However, it seems difficult to promote this policy in the long term due to impossibility of the amendment from the public’s backlash. In this way sending 5-year-olds to school is open the process to a lot of controversy in being carried forward.

Problems that “Sending 5-Year-Olds to School” Can Cause

First of all, sending 5-year-olds to school can have a negative impact on children’s development and education. The Korea Private Kindergarten Association said that the change in the school system cannot bring educational benefit suited for children’s development. Also, professor Kim Seong Cheon of Korea National University of Education mentioned that students can get excessive academic pressure as many people think that the level of the Korean educational curriculum is higher than that of children’s developmental stages. Professor Lee Youn-Sun (Lee) from Early Childhood Education of Pusan National University explained that this school system change is not appropriate considering children’s physical, emotional, and cognitive developmental characteristics in a comment in “Educational Research & Innovation Center of Korea (ERICK).” According to her comment, infants develop themselves via their free playtime. Thus, learning methods and attention spans[2] of infants does not fit with the present elementary school system of 40-minute classes. In addition, the degree of preparation for study before an early admission to school can cause polarization among students. Then, it can lead to excessive prerequisite learning. Secondly, the reformation may place students in the first 4 years at a disadvantage. 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds have to compete in the same grades, and the competition rate of college admission & employment can upsurge due to the increase of schools’ intake according to BBC News Korea in July. So, some students may be disadvantaged due to the disparity in intellectual development stages. Lastly, Lee also criticized that teachers’ workloads can increase. For infants, making a sharp distinction between their ages is crucial since they show enormous differences in many aspects like problem-solving, physical ability, self-directed ability, and sociality though they were born in the same year. However, teachers can face difficulties in making clear distinctions between ages and teaching because children who have up to 15 months of age difference can belong in the same grades due to the school system change. Moreover, the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association said that large-scale supplements of teachers, classrooms, and finances are necessary when the number of students double at some point.

Reactions of the Public

The public opinion about sending 5-year-olds to school is frigid. 31 civic & teacher organizations including the National Association of Private Kindergartens formed a coalition and then launched protests and signature campaigns to request withdrawal of the policy since July 29^th. Also, the most relevant stakeholders, teachers of day care centers, kindergartens, and elementary schools, all objected towards the policy together. Kang Deuk-gu from the Democratic Party of Korea and National Assembly Education Committee conducted a survey[3] of 131,070 parents, students, teachers, and educational workers about this policy from August 1^st to 3^rd. The survey showed that 97.9% of the respondents disagreed with the policy and 95.2% of them said they strongly disagreed. Disagreement with it unequivocally showed the public’s negative opinion regarding the policy. Moreover, 97% of the respondents opposed the expected effect of “entering into society early.” Even, 92.5% of them demanded the policy be withdrawn. On the other side, some do regard it as effective, according to coverage of the Kyunghyang Shinmun, Oh, a parent in their forties nurturing a kid born in 2017, said “I think children with few peers in the small number of the school-age population can experience wide human relations.” Also, some regard the policy as inevitable due to the rapid growth of children and retaining a working age population in a severe low birth rate and extreme aging society. In addition, professor Hong Hoo Jo of the Department of Education from Korea University, agreed with the policy by mentioning the advantages that the MOE expects: the lowered voting age, and the rapid development of infants.

Impacts of and Plans about the Policy Later on

Jang Hong Jae, from National Curriculum Policy Division of the MOE explained relevant circumstances to respond to some criticism against the policy at the open forum of the National Assembly on August 4^th. He said that the MOE had intended to begin the discussion for the policy by gathering opinions of “Offices of Education, parents, and other relevant organizations” after presenting it as a social consensus. Park then held an urgent press conference at the Korea Institute of Educational Facility Safety in Yeouido, Seoul, on August 8^th. She attributed the responsibility of the controversies about the policy to herself and resigned from her two positions, the Minister of Education and Deputy Prime Minister. The next day, Jang said the MOE would listen to the opinions of the public, and experts, not insisting on the policy. He then said that they would be open to various measures to reinforce the governmental responsibility for education, adding that they judged it to be impossible in reality. However, he said that it does not mean that they would not promote the policy. So, the coalition requested a clear withdrawal of the policy at a press conference since the public’s anxiety remained due to the vague response about its withdrawal. In this situation, the feasibleness of reforming policy is low, but no one can be sure about the withdrawal since the MOE did not announce its exact withdrawal.

Sending 5-year-olds to school emerged as a serious controversy considering children’s improved intellectual capacities and special circumstances of Korea: the low birth rate and extreme aging of the population. It can provide fair welfare by helping the socially disadvantaged quickly be a part of public education system and the young can enter the workforce earlier. However, it is not fit with toddlers’ various developmental characteristics and it can encourage competition among them. Also, many people have concerns about it with the public’s negative reactions. The Korean government, the MOE and relevant experts should reexamine this policy to help children happily study in optimal educational environments.