South Korea has one the highest achieving education systems in the world – 5th on the latest Pisa rankings. Its education system has a strong exam and test culture, with the students under constant, intense pressure. The national university exam or CSAT is rabidly competitive. Students have long working days: 8am – 4pm at school, often followed by time spent at one or more Hagwons (private tuition centres), followed by homework to the wee hours. On a not unrelated note, it has one of the highest student suicide rates in the world. We might delve further into the world of South Korean education in a later newsletter, so watch this space.
The reason Clarendon’s attention has been captured by South Korea is because of the tech forward country’s recent roll out of mandatory AI digital textbooks for Maths, English and Computer Science. The South Korean government invested £600 million on this scheme, with a plethora of companies from the world of tech and educational publishing investing a further £350 million. The project was controversial from the start: 86% of parents said they didn’t want this and were ignored; teachers’ unions warned they weren’t ready and there was not enough time to train them, they were also ignored.
The inevitable happened.
Teachers were often flummoxed on how to lead classes.
- Tech issues regularly led to interruptions.
- The tech failed to recognise writing or read written numbers, leading to often faulty feedback.
- Screens in classes led to – sigh – increased engagement and screen time, but – shocker – lower literacy rates.
- The government was forced to U-turn, stripping the digital textbooks of their mandatory status.
- At first, 35% of schools continued to use them. That number is now at 15% and still dropping.
- The South Korean government is being sued by the tech firms for damages.
Clarendon’s takes:
Listen to parents and teachers. These big AI firms are promising the world, but no one is as invested in education as parents and teachers.
Engagement is not learning. We shouldn’t confuse engagement and learning. My language attempts on Duolinguo are a testament to this.
Screen time harms reading and comprehension. There is now a stack of evidence showing that screens weaken literacy and comprehension. Clarendon will write a newsletter on this soon.
The tech issues will be ironed out. The tech will improve, so we must ask ourselves how we want it to be used in classroom.
Personalised learning sounds amazing. But we must think about what it means in practice, in a classroom setting. Our children still need universal skills and they still need knowledge, if they are to navigate the world of tomorrow.
