Free Semester to Free School Year Program in Korea: Current Educational Reform Issues

• In Event: Whole Child/Youth Development as an Imperative: Education Reform Challenges in Asia and the United States

Abstract

Purpose
Free Semester Program (ja-yu-hag-gi-je, FSP) in South Korea aims to improve students’ learning through emphasizing participation and class activities and to invigorate to explore career paths pursuing their dream in the future. All 9th graders take academic subjects concerning problem solving, project-based learning, and discussion/debate and extra curriculum like career education, independent study, arts & sports, and club activity for one semester in Korea. This paper aims to review and examine the national and provincial level education reforms and policies, focusing on transition from Free Semester to Free School Year Program.

Perspectives
FSP was introduced as a major education reform policy agenda at 2012 presidential election at the Republic of Korea. The program was asserted as a campaign promise by Park Geun-hye, the conservative party candidate while similar agenda ‘the transitional semester program’ was proposed by the competing progressive party candidate, Moon Jae-in. Then conservative party candidate won the election and implemented the FSP during her presidency but the FSP was succeeded and even extended to yearly program under incumbent president despite their political ideology disparity. The FSP is known that it was originated from Irish’s transition year program and tailored to Korean middle schools’ 7th graders and has been 2016 after three years of preparation with research and experiments. Even after policy revolt and changes, the FSP has been sustained and even developed to yearly program in the current administration. Even though the policy got lower support and showed negative effect, the program has been expanding and extending to a yearly program. Bi-partisan support of progressive (incumbent) and conservative (opponent) party is considered as a crucial factor for allowing the prosperity of the FSP. This strong and unprecedented alliance on the policy will be addressed by the paper.
Previous studies were mainly conducted at the initial stage of FSP and weighted bright side of the policy and later works mostly shed lights on introducing newly adopted subjects and extra curriculum at the classroom level. Thus, there is a dearth of macro level perspective on the effectiveness and political context of FSP. This paper fills the gap and applies political lenses to investigate what makes this policy possible, sustainable, and expansible by pursuing political parties’ interests.

Data & Methods
Using content analysis method, this paper evaluates governmental documents by the Ministry of Education, policy reports by Korea Education Develop Institute and political parties, academic papers, and newspaper articles related to FSP since 2010.

Preliminary Findings and Significance
This paper seeks to gain insight into strong the political party’s shared interests can bring the policy exist and extend even though the program has gotten low public support and shown few gains on policy objectives. Despite the ideological disparity and divide, bipolar parties can assert and deliver identical education policy even though the change of presidential sovereignty. The findings suggest that political alliance matters for sustaining and extending education policy. Achieving competing parties’ consensus and support is crucial condition for successful education policy implementation.

Author

• Daekwon Park, Myongji University