Seoul starts gifted scheme for students

Straits Times Interactive (http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg)
 
코리아헤럴드의 주상민 기자
                                                                                                Jan 3, 2005  by Joo Sang Min
 
 SEOUL - SOUTH Korea has unveiled a master plan for top students in a bid to create a pool of creative talent to maintain the country's competitive edge.

 Education experts told The Straits Times it is high time the government provided specialised education to the country's brightest after three decades of an egalitarian 'one for all' school system.

 Education Minister Ahn Byung Young said last week the gifted programme will cost the ministry an estimated 208.7 billion won (S$330 million). The money would be well spent, he said, while stressing that every South Korean student would be given equal opportunities.

 'We are not going to select rote-learning specialists,' said Ms Cho Seok Hee from the Research Centre on Gifted and Talented Education, under the auspices of the Korea Educational Development Institute, a government think-tank.

 'We are aiming to cultivate those who have a superior ability in reasoning and creativity, which is key to survival in this competitive world,' she said.

 South Korea's Excellence Education Policy is similar to Singapore's Gifted Education Programme. The latter annually takes in 500 students, or around 1 per cent of a same-age cohort. 

 Currently, all South Korean students are put into classrooms without considering their academic competence. only 0.3 per cent of a cohort or about 25,000 students receive extra classes in schools or in special institutions run by local education offices and universities. 

 Starting this year, the figure will be raised gradually until it reaches around 400,000 students - or the top 5 per cent of the third-grader (nine-year-olds) cohort - in 2010.

 Among them, the top 1 per cent, or around 80,000 students, would be defined as 'gifted students' and enrolled in the so-called gifted programme. 

 By 2010, there will be 250 special institutes devoted to them across the country. 

 The remaining 4 per cent will receive the normal education, but they will be able to complete high school education in a shorter time.

 Education Ministry officials said the expanded gifted programme would encompass all disciplines, including music and drama.

 The number of professional teachers for the gifted programme will more than double from the current 5,000 to 11,000 by 2010. 

 Some critics have cast doubt on whether it could address the bane of South Korea's education system - an over-emphasis on the college entrance examinations. Students under the gifted programme still have to sit for the same examinations.

 Some mothers are worried that their children would be sensitive to the unequal treatment.

 'If my kids are enrolled in the programme, I will be more than happy; if not, I think I will worry whether my kids feel a sense of failure,' said Ms Choi Kyung Ja, a 37-year-old housewife with two young children.

 'But so long as the system can produce some truly brilliant scientists and artists, why not?'