Education News

About a week ago, the moderator on the SMOE FB page for NSETs politely asked that people keep comments about the Kwak No Hyun situation to themselves. Gwak is the disgraced former Superintendent of the Seoul school system, who has gone back to jail for paying off a rival to drop out of the Superintendent's race in 2010.

Korea Times is reporting that MEST (Ministry of Education, Science and Technology) will be conducting a two-week audit of SMOE:

... a team of 20 ministry officials will inspect major policies, personnel appointments as well as budget expenditure approved by Kwak.

Of course, there are the usual claims that the audit is politically motivated, what with the timing being so close to the election to replace Kwak, to coincide with the presidential election on Dec. 19, and the fact that the conservatives in power at MEST tend only to audit liberal-run education departments.

The Stumbler alerted me to the second story, from Joongang Daily, reporting that the government plans to add 2,300 English conversation teachers in elementary, middle and high schools next year.

This was surprising, because I just moved to an elementary school because they'd de-funded the high school English conversation program. Ah, but then I read this:

“These teachers will not be woneomin [native speaker] instructors, but native Korean instructors who are fluent in English,” said Lee Jeong-ah, an English education official at the ministry.

Just where they will find 2,300 Korean teachers fluent in English is left as an exercise for the reader.