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Introduction
As approaching to the Information and Knowledge-based
society, schools face challenges to bring up students
with capability and intellectual creativity that they
can adapt themselves to the new society. However, the
current school system in Korea is hard to meet these societal
demands, mainly because it was established and operated
to meet outdated strategies which were appropriate in
the industrial society.
The traditional educational system in Korean schools,
both in the primary and the secondary levels, had greatly
contributed to the economic development of Korea. The
"Miracle of Han River" is well-known for Korean
people to reconstruct the nation through the ruins of
Korean War in 1950. Even though the investment to education
was small at that time, the quality of education in the
primary and secondary schools was good enough to meet
the social and economic needs. The youth was taught, trained,
and finally grown up with high level of knowledge and
skills, compared with educational expenses and their labor
cost. Also, in terms of quantity, the education environments
are remarkably improved over the years, that is, a great
number of schools have been built and a large number of
teachers has been newly employed over the last 50 years.
As a result, more than 99 % of the students can complete
at least the secondary education and up to 68 % of students
can get the tertiary education. Therefore, the illiteracy
rate of Korea marked one of the lowest in the world.
Since Korean society has been traditionally Confucian
society, education has been considered as means and short
cut to upgrade the social position. The competition to
get good education and to enter one of the prestigious
universities in Korea was, is, and will be extremely tough
process to go through for a high school graduate. The
parents are willing to get their children private tutoring
and pay extra fee for the services in the hope that their
children should enter one of the famous universities in
the nation. As a result, Korea represents as one of the
high-performing countries in the world in terms of education
achievement. Ironically, Korea may be the single country
in the world, where the government should initiate some
policies to lessen the student's burden on study, in other
words, to discourage students not to study so hard.
However, in spite of the success in the past, the education
in Korea is said to be in the risk of 'school collapse'.
In addition, it faces a criticism that schools fail to
bring up students with capability and intellectual creativity
that are necessary to meet the demands of the future society.
In fact, many aspects of Korean society have been changed
economically and socially during the last 30 years, but
schools remain unchanged at all. Most of schools still
adhere to the traditional ways of teaching and learning
based on 'learning by rote memory' and 'teaching by injection'.
The Korean government has recognized problems of the
current education system in developing the human resources
for the future society. Through a long and in-depth discussion
among stakeholders of education, the 'Education Reform
Initiatives' was announced in 1995, and is being carried
on. One of the issues was the utilization of information
and communication technology (ICT) in the primary and
secondary schools. In 1997, the Ministry of Education
launched 'The Master Plan for ICT in Schools', which will
be completed successfully by the end of this year.
In this session, the strategies and the related activities
will be briefly presented, and the case studies about
the cooperation and partnership between public and private
sectors will be discussed in the view of the decision-makers
of Korean government.
ICT in Korean Schools
As I mentioned earlier, Korea has been dramatically changed.
This is very true in the field of the information technology
and communication. For example, the number of Internet
users is expanded up to 16 million out of the total population
of 47 million. The number of the cellular phone subscribers
went up to 20 million. Even though there is no exact survey
and statistics, nowadays many of jobs demand literacy
on ICT.
Therefore, one of our goals is to let every student to
be equipped with sufficient literacy and skills on ICT.
The other one is to build up an ICT-friendly environment
in schools, where teachers can use the information and
communication technology in their classes when they want
to.
To achieve the goals, the followings are stated as landmarks
in this endeavor;
- From 2001, every school should offer at least one
course on computer and Internet to every student. At
the same time, multimedia contents will be used in the
regular classes.
- Within 2000, the necessary ICT-infrastructure should
be built up
Teacher training on ICT should be continued
- Various and sufficient multimedia contents should
be developed and provided
- Efforts to be made to minimize the adverse effects
of ICT, including the "digital divide"
ICT-infrastructure in Korean schools
In 1997, the Ministry of Education, Korea, announced
a Blue Print ('97?''99) on building ICT-infrastructure,
but the plan was modified to be completed by 2002 due
to the financial crisis at the end of 1997. However, in
his New Year's Policy Address, President Kim Dae Jung
proclaimed that the plan would be completed within this
year.
The plan includes the followings;
- At least one computer laboratory is to be built up
at every primary and secondary school, equipped with
multimedia PCs connected to Internet
- Every classroom is to be equipped with a multimedia
PC connected to Internet
- Every teacher is to be provided with a multimedia
PC
- Each and every school is to build up the local area
network (LAN) and to be connected to high speed Internet.
At the moment, it is expected that the plan will be completed
successfully. The government believes that the afore-mentioned
plan is not the ultimate goal, but just a immediate goals
to begin. Now the government of the Republic of Korea
places high priority on how to upgrade and enhance the
ICT-infrastructure.
Teacher Training on ICT
No matter how wonderful the ICT-infrastructure is built
up, it is useless if teacher does not utilize it. Just
about 4 years ago, when the master plan was launched,
teachers were though to be ICT-illiterate. At that time,
some of teachers had excellent skills on ICT but many
of them did not, partially because the teachers' ages
ranges from 20's to 60's. Especially the aged teachers
tended to be reluctant to accept the mainstream of the
information age. Also, many teachers were not provided
due teacher training courses on computer and Internet.
However, at the moment, one survey result in the end
of 1999 shows that teachers are one of the leading ICT-user
groups in Korea. More than 98 % of teachers can use a
word processor, 77 % of them can surf Internet, and the
50% of them use their computers daily for more than 3
hours at school.
So far, what was done during the last 4 years can be
summarized as followings;
- Basic training on ICT for 25 % of teachers every year
- Special in-service training of at least one core-teacher
per school to lead to peer-teaching the other teachers
- Enhancement of pre-teacher training in the teacher's
universities
Teacher Training will be continued and upgraded with higher
level until most of teachers can create multimedia contents
by themselves.
Development of educational softwares and multimedia contents
According to a survey, some of the reasons why teachers
are not trying to use ICT in their classes are resulted
by the lack of educational softwares and multimedia contents
and the low quality of them. In facts, the softwares and
contents should be developed by teachers, because teachers
are the experts in teaching. It is not easy for them to
develop the softwares and contents, because they are not
experts in information technologies. On the other hand,
many private software companies want to do business with
schools, but most of their products fail to meet the teachers'
demands because most of them do not have pedagogical knowledge
and experiences.
The government recognizes that the potential advantages
of ICT are not fully exploited in the classes. For example,
some new teaching and learning methods should be developed
and employed, such as peer group learning and group discussion
between students from different schools and different
countries through Internet. However, the government perceives
that it is time-consuming process because teachers themselves
had been taught with the traditional way of teaching and
learning methods based on 'teaching by injection' and
'learning by rote memory'.
The government is now considering about how to improve
learning environment and how to develop new teaching and
learning methods and related softwares and contents. For
the last two years, 10 schools were selected as ICT-model
schools, and it has been tried to figure out which methods
are possible and effective in classes through ICT and
what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the
successful application of the new methods in classes.
Unfortunately, there is no single conclusion except one
solution: international cooperation.
Korea's Strategies to promote public-private partnership
Most of the schools in Korea are public and therefore
they are state-funded institutions, while private companies
pursue profits. Also, teachers are oriented to the pedagogy,
while private companies are oriented to the technology.
So, their concerns are different and it is hard to understand
each other unless they try to trust each other. In many
cases, they haven't had any motivations and needs to cooperate
with each other. Consequently, few cases on experiences
and success stories were reported in cooperation between
the public schools and the private companies.
Therefore, it is high time for stakeholders of education
to promote public-private partnership to share common
interests with each other. The government's position is
focused on that, and it can be summarized as followings;
- to open the education market to the private companies
and enlarge it.
- to increase opportunities to meet each other as much
as possible
- to protect the consumers: schools, teachers, students
and parents
Case 1: Public-private partnership in Building ICT-infrastructure
at Schools
There is no doubt that schools have to teach computer
and internet to students. However, when it comes to how
to build up such system, it is not easy to draw consensus
even among policy-makers. The reason why is that it requires
tremendous budget on the part of the government. Actually,
it demands lots of investment in building the ICT-infrastructure,
purchasing softwares, maintaining them and etc. In addition,
due to rapid developments and changes of technologies,
the life span of the ICT-infrastructure and softwares
become short, and so, they should be exchanged and/or
upgraded every 3 or 4 years. Consequently, one of the
most difficult issues on the utilization of ICT in schools
is how to raise funds to support the project solidly and
continuously.
In the case of Korea, 1.7 trillion won (about 1.5 billion
dollars) has been spent over the last 4 years on building
only basic ICT-infrastructure and it is expected that
more money have to be spent on maintaining and upgrading
the infrastructure in the future. I presume that a number
of economies may have the same problem.
The government's approach to reduce budget coincides
with effort to create partnership with the private companies.
These companies do their business on the conditions that
they should build up the ICT-infrastructure in schools
and they should allow teachers to use the computers during
the classes. After school, they offer lessons on computer
and internet, and collect some extra education fee from
students. During the last 4 years, about 85 thousand PCs
were provided to 2,160 schools, and the governmental budget
of more than 100 million dollars was saved.
Case 2 : Public-Private Partnership to reduce Internet
communication cost
One of the barriers is caused by budgetary constraint
for communication fee for Internet access. The increase
of accesses to Internet will result in upgrading of internet
speed and the more communication cost. Actually, even
though the internet communication cost in Korea is cheaper
than many other economies, it is still formidable to many
schools.
The government's approach is to use the collective purchase
in close collaboration with schools. With this regard,
the government initiated partnership program with the
largest telecommunication company in Korea such as Korea
Telecom, and made a big deal to get a school discount.
As a result, it becomes possible during next 5 years that
every school can use the high speed Internet with very
low price for 24 hours a day. Up to 256Kbps is free, 512Kbps
about 30 dollars per month, 2Mbps about 300 dollars. These
prices are much lower than one tenth of the normal commercial
prices. In return, schools have to abide by some options:
teachers and students have to use the email and portal
services provided by the company, but free of charge.
Due to the public-private partnership, the government
was able to save the budget of 50 million dollars per
year, 250 million dollars for the next 5 years. It needs,
however, solid consensus especially from the consumer
sides including teachers and students. Actually, some
teachers and students raise complaints that they don't
want to give their personal information for the email
services. One lesson learned from this big deal is that
it is really difficult to satisfy both parties, the public
school and the private company. However, the government
believes that the scheme will yield a "Win-Win"
game" after all.
Case 3 : Outsourcing of operation of a network to
a private company
Another big deal was implemented this year includes outsourcing
plan. During the last 10 years, the Ministry of Education
has operated and managed a computer network to provide
the Internet services to universities and many educational
organizations. The KREN, Korean Research and Education
Network, is one of the largest internet service providers
(ISP) in Korea. Currently, 1,500 organizations are connected
to this network, including 200 universities, libraries
and research institutions. The network has also played
the key role as an international gateway with a 155Mbps
high speed trunk line. It has also contributed to the
proliferation of Internet across the country. Many professors
and college students have used it and have done experiments
on it. Furthermore, many skills and techniques which is
necessary for Internet operation and management have been
developed on it, because it was the first network which
provides Internet services in Korea.
However, over the last 10 years the environment has changed
dramatically: the Internet users have increased from thousands
of professors and colleges students who were mainly computer
scientists or engineers to 16 million, which occupies
one third of the population of Korea. Mean time, tens
of commercial internet service providers have also appeared
as competitors to KREN.
The KREN has some internal problems. It was always traffic-jammed,
since the internet traffic increased more than 300 % every
year. Even though the government spent more than 10 million
dollars on the KREN last year, the traffic problem was
not solved. Another problem was the lowering of service
quality such as long recovery time from failures. The
main reason why is that the KREN has been operated by
civil servants, and so, it remained shutdown until the
next morning when the failures occurred after working
hours or during weekends.
The government finally decided to outsource the KREN
to the telecommunication company, Korea Telecom. To our
surprise, many universities agreed on the government decision.
As a result of the arrangement, the government and universities
can get higher quality of Internet services with almost
same costs, and, in return, the company get more than
20 million dollar market share per year.
Case 4: Public-private partnership in developing educational
software and contents
Over the last 10 years, many educational softwares has
been developed by research institutions subsidized by
the government and/or local governments. But, most of
them have not been used since the computing environment
such as operating systems and hardwares has changed. For
example, many computer-aided instruction and education
(CAI/CAE) programs developed on DOS were obsolete, because
they were not upgraded to run on the current MS/WINDOWS
environments.
Consequently, despite that many programs and educational
contents were developed and a lot of budget was spent
on developing them, many of teachers are still complaining
that the lack of softwares and contents is the main reason
why they don't use ICT in their classes.
Then, what is the problem? Surprisingly, the answer is
simple: the governmental funds have a tendency to be invested
on the new ones, not the already developed ones.
Thus, the government changed its strategy on how to utilize
the funds. Now, the government and public institutions
don't try to develop any softwares on their own as possible.
They will try to only under certain circumstances such
as there is no company that has the product that teachers
want. Instead, the government subsidizes the fund for
the softwares and multimedia contents to schools, and
lets the teachers choose and purchase what they want to
use at the commercial market.
Since the decision was made just 3 years ago, there is
no evidence that it works, but it is hoped that most of
softwares are upgraded continuously and survive in the
commercial market for a long time. However, it is clear
that the decision made increases in the number of the
private companies that want to develop the educational
softwares and contents since it resulted in the opening
and building of school markets to the private companies.
It is also clear that the quality of the software products
is far more improved.
However, frankly speaking, the decision has a big drawback,
that is, a lot of money is required. For example, it takes
about 30 million dollars in installing only a word processor,
which costs 30 dollars per copy, into the about 1 million
PCs provided for the last 4 years. The cost will increase
as the number of PCs increases. Additional cost is also
required to upgrade the software every time it is upgraded.
So, it is really difficult to withstand the temptation
that the government develops the software by itself in
order to save the budget.
To compensate the drawback of the decision, the government
is trying to make big deals with the private companies.
Even though many software companies offer school discounts
on their products, the discounts are not enough for schools
to pay for their products. The government is trying to
persuade them to give better discounts to schools with
the belief that they will get their potential customers
and potential market if their software programs are chosen
at certain schools. Unix Operating System is a good example.
At the moment, many of them understand the government's
bids and give bigger discounts, or donate their products
to schools. However, some companies, most of which possess
exclusive positions in the commercial market, do not inclined
to accept this proposal.
Case 5: Public-Private Partnership to Narrow the Knowledge
Gap
One of the difficult but important issues is how to
narrow the 'Information gaps' or 'Knowledge gap', so called
Digital Divide between the haves and the have-nots. As
a part of the government policy to narrow this gap, the
Ministry of Education offers special programs to 500,000
students (about 6 % of all students) from low-income families,
which is designed to improve their literacy on ICT. Among
them, 50,000 students whose achievement is excellent are
planning to get a PC at the end of this year, and their
Internet access will be free for the next 5 years.
However, there still exist more students who belong to
margins of benefits from the government. So, the government's
concern is how to enable more students to receive the
benefits of ICT. One approach is to encourage the donations
from the private companies. It was really pleasant to
recognize that many companies are willing to help them
without conditions or with small conditions such as advertisement.
Typically, SK Telecom, the biggest cellular phone company
in Korea, donated 26.2 billion won (about 23 million dollars)
to provide PCs and peripherals to the students with economic
difficulties, rural schools and special schools with the
handicapped students.
Conclusions and Recommendations
ICT-based instruction is just introduced to Korean schools
in the hope that every children will be able to be equipped
themselves with literacy and skills on ICT, which is a
necessary capabilities for the future society. It is also
expected that the proper application of ICT into classes
will be able to lead the better educational quality.
From the government' view, ICT-based instruction is a
must for the future. In terms of financing, however, it
is a heavy burden, because it requires a lot of budget
for ICT-infrastructure, teacher training, software purchase,
communication costs, maintenance fee, and etc. In fact,
only the government can not hold the whole responsibilities.
The burden should be shared by all the members of the
society, including the government, school administrators,
teachers, the private companies, parents, and etc. It
is necessary but difficult to build a consensus among
them on sharing the responsibilities. Thus, it is the
government's role to facilitate this issue.
This topic, how to promote public-private partnership,
can be thought as how to share the responsibilities and
interests between the public schools and the private companies.
Until now, schools have had a tendency to depend on only
the governmental subsidies, but they should take up a
positive attitude to mobilize resources from out of the
schools including the private companies.
Finally, ICT-based instruction is new to most of the
economies, and so there are few experiences available
and studies done to refer. It seems that most economies
have the similar problems such as how to build up ICT-infrastructure,
teacher training, software development, and etc. If their
experiences, solutions and policies to the problems are
shared, at least the trials-and-errors can be reduced.
The Korean government is willing to share its experiences
with the other economies. I believe that the international
cooperation is another type of partnerships in the days
to come.
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