Korea Pushes its Students to Top International Rankings

In Korea, students go to school from 7am to 10pm, and top tutors are paid up to $4 million a year. The push to perform at the top is so intense that 40 percent of students reported feeling suicidal.

In South Korea, how you do on the national college entrance exam determines who lives a life of luxury or a life of modesty. Families know that they must do whatever it takes to ensure that their children achieve the highest possible score.  The test date for the eight hour College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) is the 2nd Thursday of November, where 700,000 seniors in high school submit to the ultimate examination.

Students can either test to enter one of the smaller number of competitive high schools or they can enter by lottery one of the many non-competitive high schools. The latter is not the Korean way. In order to by highly placed in society the student needs to get into a competitive high school so that he can be trained well enough to get the highest possible score to do well on the college entrance exam.

Hagwons are a common part of every young Korean's life, beginning in kingergarten. They are also known as "cram schools." Students are studying from that age pretty much round the clock to make sure that they are on par with other students vying for the top spots. By high school, kids are functioning on about five hours of slumber a night.

On test day, younger students line the street and entry way to the school beginning as early as 4 in the morning to cheer incoming test takers. Its a national occassion with traffic being rerouted and police taking control of the streets to lessen noise. The country knows how important this is so they do their best to cater the environment to students.

All this in a country that was more or less illiterate 60 years ago, but that now ranks number 2 in reading on the international PISA exam. Their high school graduation rate is 93 percent, as opposed to 77 percent in the US.

All this pressure culminates in Korea having the highest suicide rate among students in the OECD countries. The pressure has to take its toll somehow. A recent studies find them to be the most unhappy children. 

The society shuns available help and instead, college students binge drink or seek counsel from fortune tellers.

Korea's education costs top the OECD country list. Households borrow or scrape to pay for formal education and for the cram schools without any assistance. Sometimes they're spending half of family income in extreme cases. The Korean birth rate has plummeted because the financial strain of prepping a child from kingergarted to the CSAT college exam is too much for prospective parents.

Government measures to alleviate cost include standardizing curricula in hopes that kids get everything they need in formal school instead of having to pay for cram schools. The Korean president went as far as mandating that the "shadow schools close after 10pm. Task forces have found some still open after midnight in violation of the new rules.

Mayo Olagundoye
Brooklyn Tutoring