Schooling Minister Choi Kyo-jin holds a press briefing marking his first 100 days in workplace at Authorities Advanced Sejong, Monday. Courtesy of Ministry of Schooling
With school rooms emptying in provincial cities and employers warning of widening abilities shortages, Schooling Minister Choi Kyo-jin mentioned at a briefing Monday that Korea’s schooling system had change into a frontline response to the nation’s deeper nationwide and regional structural issues. These embrace demographic decline and the hollowing out of areas past the capital.
Whereas the ministry recognized priorities like fostering democratic citizenship and bolstering regional universities, it made no reference to insurance policies regarding worldwide college students.
At a briefing marking his first 100 days in workplace, Choi mentioned Korea as an entire — and its areas particularly — was coming into a interval of profound change and disaster.
“The fast development of synthetic intelligence (AI) is reshaping the kind of expertise society calls for, whereas the disaster of regional depopulation is looking for a basically new position for schooling coverage,” he mentioned.
“Even amid these modifications, what should not be forgotten is the core of schooling. Above all, it’s important to supply schooling that permits college students to develop into democratic residents.”
Emphasizing the necessity to put together college students to take duty for social points and take part actively as democratic residents, Choi mentioned that reinforcing the basics of schooling could be the central focus of subsequent 12 months’s coverage agenda.
To that finish, the ministry will emphasize discussion- and debate-based lessons that hyperlink subject-specific information with real-world social points, whereas working to publicize and institutionalize these studying ideas.
Choi added that the federal government is searching for to go associated laws to put civic schooling on a extra steady coverage footing and that it deliberate to increase and reorganize the related division inside the schooling ministry starting subsequent 12 months.
He additionally burdened the significance of strengthening college students’ important considering abilities and cultivating a balanced set of competencies, calling for complete instruction in areas equivalent to elections, the Structure, media, tradition, economics and labor. The initiatives, he added, shall be pursued via shut interministerial cooperation to make sure substantive and efficient implementation.
As one other precedence for addressing nationwide change and the disaster of regional depopulation, Choi pointed to strengthening regional universities as a pillar of balanced nationwide growth.
“Enhancing the competitiveness of regional universities is crucial to making a virtuous cycle by which college students examine of their native communities, develop into expertise wanted by the area and finally settle there,” he mentioned.
In keeping with this objective, the ministry plans to take a position 885.5 billion received ($597 million) this 12 months — double final 12 months’s finances — to enhance the standard of analysis at nationwide flagship universities, with whole funding anticipated to exceed 4 trillion received over the subsequent 5 years. It additionally plans to actively help universities’ efforts to generate their very own income, together with via industry-academia cooperation.
With these helps in place, the ministry mentioned it anticipated to increase international packages aimed toward giving college students foundational abilities in synthetic intelligence, whereas broadening alternatives for exchanges with abroad universities and internships at overseas firms.
As well as, the ministry mentioned it would again innovation and structural reforms at succesful personal regional universities, increasing monetary help to permit establishments to pay attention assets on their areas of energy and pursue specialization via restructuring departments and overhauling curricula.
Though attracting worldwide college students and international expertise, equivalent to via the Examine Korea 300K Challenge, has been promoted as a authorities precedence, no detailed insurance policies associated to worldwide college students had been outlined on the briefing.
