The Low Birthrate Crisis: A Golden Opportunity for Elementary Education Reform

Chang Yoon-sook

The author is former secretary general of the Presidential Committee on Aging Society and Population Policy and vice president of the Korean Hansen Welfare Association.

President Lee Jae Myung, pointing to the tendency of teachers to avoid field classes, said they were “depriving students of good educational opportunities in order to avoid taking responsibility for accidents.” Teachers reacted coldly to the remark, saying he was ignoring poor conditions of school outings and the heavy legal responsibilities they bear as teachers. Lee again instructed officials to improve unreasonable aspects, gather opinions from all sectors and pursue necessary policies. Behind this controversy lies the problem of a public education system that has failed to keep up with changes in the times.

Korea is the only advanced country where elementary schools run “half-day classes.” The annual number of instructional hours for elementary school students is 655. That is 150 hours fewer than the OECD average of 805 hours, and Korea ranks at the bottom. What fills these limited school hours is the “hagwon treadmill.” The reality in which more than 90 percent of elementary school students wander through the private education market after regular classes is a self-portrait of Korea’s abnormal education system.

The driving force behind Korea’s development into an advanced country was human capital, and at the center of that was education. When compulsory elementary education was introduced, the poor government chose a low-cost, high-efficiency model in order to provide education to all students. It created two-year colleges of education to train teachers in a short period of time, and minimized public education hours. Teachers took responsibility for education, and parents were mobilized for school events. This matched the era of industrialization and was regarded as a global success story.

As Korea entered the 2000s, dual-income households became common, and the country moved into the information age. The place that felt the change most quickly was elementary school. Parents wanted safe schools to take on many responsibilities. Educational demand also diversified in the information age. “Care classrooms” were created for dual-income families, and the private education market took over diverse educational needs. Schools, however, became busy pushing students outside by reducing public education hours. They even avoided field trips because of responsibility for safety accidents, further reducing the function of public education.

The clock of elementary education is now broken and has stopped. This year, the number of first graders entering elementary school fell below 300,000. More frightening than the speed at which the number of children is declining is the reality that an outdated system is being neglected without even a sense of crisis. Korea boasts an education budget far above the OECD average, yet it remains trapped in the half-day system, a legacy of the era when compulsory education was introduced. Uniform and standardized teaching methods and curricula also remain unchanged.

Paradoxically, the ultra-low birthrate is an opportunity to fundamentally change elementary education. With the decline in the number of students, about 60,000 surplus teachers are expected to emerge by 2030. The poor solution would be to cut education finances and the number of teachers. Instead, Korea should use the low birthrate as an opportunity to normalize public education hours. It must provide diverse education suited to the age of artificial intelligence and change teaching methods and curricula as well.

The demand that public education take full responsibility for children’s lives in line with changes in the times is a global trend. Major countries are also strengthening the state’s responsibility for elementary education. Even Germany, the origin of the half-day system, has expanded school hours for all grades until 4 p.m. starting this year and has required schools to provide diverse education. Denmark has sharply increased elementary school hours and experiential learning since 2014.

Korea also attempted to introduce a full-day system to normalize elementary education hours, but the effort collapsed because of opposition from the education community. Instead, the country has only expanded care services, which was easier. The education community, which has pushed students outside schools citing administrative burdens and student fatigue, must face reality. Our children are now becoming increasingly exhausted in the market of endless competition in private education. Allowing diverse educational needs to be met within the fence of public education is true education reform, and it is the responsibility of the state. Until now, education reform has been equated with changing the college admissions system. Elementary education was not treated as a subject of reform.

The role of public education must be rebuilt starting with elementary education. Simply increasing the quantity of classes is not the entirety of education reform. A qualitative transformation is needed, one that completely redesigns educational content, methods and curricula in line with changes in the times. Unlike past governments that were overly mindful of the education community, I hope the Lee Jae-myung administration will pursue bold reforms that meet the demands of the times. We must create “schools worthy of the name,” where teachers recover the joy of teaching, children nurture their dreams and parents can entrust their children to schools with peace of mind.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.