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The most striking change in education from the June 3 local elections is the spread of International Baccalaureate (IB) pledges. In the 2022 superintendent elections, 17 of 57 candidates pledged or supported IB; in this election, 30 of 58 did, and 13 were elected. Notably, beyond superintendent candidates, as many as 28 candidates for the National Assembly, provincial governorships, mayoralties, county heads, provincial councils and city councils pledged IB, transcending party and ideological lines. Of these, a total of 16 were elected. IB has now established itself as a community livelihood issue beyond an educational one.
In this superintendent election, the regions where IB was the most fiercely contested issue were Daegu and Jeju, where public IB programs first began. In Daegu, a conservative candidate who pledged to vigorously promote IB and expand it into a Korean-style Baccalaureate (KB) defeated two progressive candidates who pledged to halt IB. In Jeju, despite the progressive camp's failure to unify, a progressive candidate who promised strong IB promotion defeated another progressive candidate lukewarm on IB as well as the incumbent superintendent, the unified conservative candidate. The common denominator that decided the outcomes in both the Daegu and Jeju superintendent races was a strong IB pledge.
In Jeonnam-Gwangju, Gangwon, Gyeongnam, Daejeon and Sejong as well, candidates who pledged IB were elected, defeating rivals who were reserved or negative about it. This can be seen as the result of parent voters—who had either experienced IB education or heard of it by word of mouth—throwing their support behind IB pledges. In particular, in the provincial council election in Pyoseon-myeon, Jeju—home to the elementary, middle and high schools where IB was first introduced—candidates from the Democratic Party, the People Power Party and independents all pledged IB. The effect of an education policy that turned a region facing the crisis of population extinction into one drawing population inflows, thanks to IB schools, gained persuasive force across ideological lines.
Nevertheless, there are still attempts to confine IB to one camp or to position it as the opposite of innovation schools. There is no reason whatsoever for IB and innovation schools to be mutually exclusive. IB education is similar in direction to innovation education, while possessing systematic assessment and teacher-training systems that innovation schools lack. If innovation schools use the IB system as a tool, they can create even more improved innovation schools. What matters is education that makes students who used to slump over and sleep in class concentrate on lessons and refine their own thinking. Education is also needed that builds students' capacity to prepare for the artificial intelligence (AI) era while bringing the light back to their eyes. In the AI era, dividing people along camps or ideologies is a wasteful debate.
As it happens, IB teacher-training programs have emerged at several universities, and an IB Education Research Center was recently established at Seoul National University. Rather than confining education that will determine the nation's future to outdated camps, it is time to design KB based on the empirical data of IB research. To survive in the AI era, escaping the exam paradigm of "finding the right answer quickly" is more urgent than anything. The focus of debate must shift from camps to the essence of education.
