A teacher at a girls’ high school on South Korea’s southern Jeju Island demonstrates an online class on April 1, 2020. (Yonhap)
SUWON, June 8 (Korea Bizwire) — With the existing framework of education being challenged by the outbreak of the coronavirus, the future of schooling will likely to undergo a paradigm shift from education to learning, a new report predicted.
The Gyeonggi Research Institute (GRI) issued on Sunday a new report titled “Future Brought Forward by Coronavirus, From the Era of Education to the Era of Learning.”
In its report, the GRI predicted that the future of education will undergo a paradigm shift from an era when education is mandatory to an era in which learning is a right.
The nation’s education level has greatly improved partly thanks to the introduction of the mandatory education system, with the nation’s literacy rate reaching 99 percent in 2020, a dramatic improvement from 1950 when the nation’s illiteracy rate was 78 percent.
The nation’s university entrance for high school graduates also rose to 70 percent and the adult participation rate for life-long learning exceeded 40 percent.
In today’s highly educated era, the coronavirus brought about a delay in school openings and the introduction of online classes for the first time in the history of Korean education, providing an opportunity to look back on the nature of institutional education and schools.
The report predicted that edutech (education + technology) will take off at schools, with the coronavirus serving as a turning point for schools to shift from traditional education methods to IT-based approaches.
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
