Public education spending on middle and high school students in Korea has more than doubled over the past nine years, yet academic achievement has regressed, according to new findings. The government is pouring massive resources into education even as the school-age population shrinks, but the core indicator of educational outcomes — academic achievement — is moving backward.
Before this year's supplementary budget, the main budget for metropolitan and provincial education special accounts reached 93.07 trillion won, equivalent to 13% of the total government budget of 727.9 trillion won. Experts say curriculum redesign and other measures are needed, but the National Education Commission, the Ministry of Education, and metropolitan and provincial offices of education are all passing responsibility to one another.
According to a report titled "Analysis of the Impact of Public Education Characteristics on Students" released Wednesday by the Korea Development Institute (KDI), annual public education spending per secondary school student stood at $25,267 in 2022, 1.8 times the OECD average of $14,096. Considering that public education spending on middle and high school students was $9,913 in 2013, the figure has more than tripled — up 2.5-fold — in less than a decade.
By contrast, results from the National Assessment of Educational Achievement, which gauges students' overall academic performance, have worsened over the past decade. The share of second-year high school students rated at "average or above" in mathematics stood at 85.2% in 2013 but plunged to 55.9% in 2023. Meanwhile, the share of students classified as "below basic proficiency" rose from 4.5% to 16.6% over the same period. Despite the government's steady rollout of programs such as strengthened after-school classes, smart education, free high school education, the Basic Academic Ability Guarantee Act, and the Neulbom School program, none have produced meaningful gains in academic achievement.
Education experts point to declining basic academic ability due to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and reduced concentration from increased use of smartphones and other digital devices. Some parents cite the current school grading system, which forces students to devote excessive time preparing for "performance assessments" that have little to do with written exams. Others point to the expansion of the regional balanced selection system, which they argue confines even top students to a limited academic environment.
Students' learning capacity is expected to continue declining. Under college admission reforms focused solely on reducing dependence on private education and enhancing educational equity, more students are skipping essential foundational subjects. This is reflected in trends such as "Hwaktong-run," in which students choose probability and statistics over the more demanding calculus in the math section of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), and "Satam-run," in which students opt for social studies over science in the inquiry section. Critics argue that the current admissions system focuses only on narrowing regional and class-based education gaps and cutting private tutoring costs while neglecting the enhancement of students' academic competence.
