Lee orders measures to rein in soaring private education expenses By Yoo Cheong-mo

SEOUL, Sept. 23 (Yonhap) -- President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday instructed his
Cabinet to work out fundamental measures to reduce the nation's snowballing
private tutoring expenses, saying the rapidly growing private education market is
laying a heavy financial burden on household economies.

"I've heard domestic households are increasingly burdened by rising private
tutoring expenses. Private educational institutions are accused of excessively
raising their fees, though their business is irrelevant to global oil prices,"
Lee was quoted by his spokesman as telling the weekly Cabinet meeting.

"The government is still committed to shrinking the private education sector by
normalizing education at public schools in the long term. But new policy measures
are now needed to immediately help ordinary households lessen their private
tutoring expenses."

The president then instructed Cabinet ministers to look more closely into current
circumstances surrounding the private education market before mapping out the
cost reduction measures, according to his spokesman Lee Dong-kwan.
South Korea's extracurricular education market was estimated at 33.5 trillion won
(US$29.1 billion) as of 2006, accounting for 3.75 percent of the nation's gross
domestic product and slightly exceeding the government's education budget of 31
trillion won, a report from the Hyundai Research Institute showed. The report
also said South Korean households with students spend an average of 646,000 won
on private tutoring every month.
The majority of South Korea's elementary and secondary school students are known
for flocking to expensive private tutoring institutions, despite repeated
government efforts to encourage students to focus on just their studies at
school.
In a conservative estimate, the government's National Statistical Office (NSO)
insisted recently that the nation's private education market grew to slightly
over 20 trillion won last year. According to the NSO survey, 77 percent of
primary and secondary students were found to attend various out-of-school
classes.
Since his inauguration in February, Lee has said that English education at public
schools has to be reinforced to help reduce snowballing private spending on
English education, estimated at 15 trillion won annually.
"South Korea's private tutoring market is estimated to have grown to 30 trillion
won a year, with English education accounting for roughly half. The snowballing
out-of-school education expenses are a serious social problem," Lee said
recently.