Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

Korean educational climates are often characterized as severely competitive battlegrounds for entrance into better universities. Parental education fever for their children to score high on high-stakes tests lead to excessive private tutoring, which focuses on increasing test scores rather than nurturing practical or useful long-term competency. Special educational provisions for gifted students had been perceived as a threat to the healthy development of public education. The cutthroat nature of university admissions in Korea catalyzed the implementation of equalization policies—policies that abolished entrance examinations for junior high and senior high schools in 1968 and 1974, respectively. Because of these policies, classes in middle and high schools have become a mixture of advanced, average, and slow learners without individualized instruction. While the policies have eliminated cutthroat competition at the secondary level, the battle begins again when the screening for university admissions approaches. Due to the equalization policies, instruction in schools focuses on the average student; the instructional needs of the gifted have been ignored for over 30 years. Korea''s unique educational climate has delayed the development of our gifted and talented education (GATE) programs, which are some generations behind that of other countries. Until the year 2000, the government was hesitant towards the provision and expansion of GATE, fearing that it would reinforce parental education fever or cause private tutoring expenses to soar.