Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

Vision for the Future Education System

Tendencies that will impact on future Korean education are declining birth rate and aged society, acceleration of globalization, change of labour market, information communication technology and unified or integrated South and North Korean society, in summary.

First, decrease in school age population due to low birth rate will diminish the demand for education service, stimulate the competition to attract customers, and expend the range of the power of consumer. Therefore, the need for high quality education program will come to the fore. Securing their customers would be a hard task for existing program offerers unless they improve the quality of a program. As a result, education consumer will become a key figure in survival of education program. In the other hand, the increase in aged population will influence on consumer's trends including education program's goal, contents, methods, teachers and facilities to meet their needs.

Second, demand for improvement in the widening social and economic gaps will be strengthened. Following that, there will be additional needs for the policy to enhance the education welfare of the low income class, the policy to resolve the educational opportunity gap, after school policy, building social security network, and so on.

Third, international compatability and quality of Korean education will be on the rise due to the fast globalization. Future education customers will look for better and more suitable education service for themselves among both domestic and abroad. Also international labour market, requiring human resources with expertism and high technology will rapidly grow.

Forth, according to the change in labour market, the importance on training semi-skilled workers or manufacturing field will decrease continuously. Therefore, post-secondary non-tertiary level education after middle school will have a demand on firm foundation of professionalism. Also, life-long employment will be experiencing diminution and demand of continuous development of one's ability for members of society will be increased due to growth of service industry and appearance of new jobs.

Fifth, universal application of info-communication technology especially will incur revolutionary change of teaching and learning method and learning space, therefore learners in the future society will demand education service that associate with different level of communication environment.

Finally, in relationship of South and North Korea, demand for education of national integration and unified policy will be increased due to acceleration of integration that spontaneously formed and fulfillment of united state.