List of gifted schools1/21/2024 Much of the country is mountainous – only 30% is lowland – and it contains some 3,000 islands. Other large cities are Busan (3.5m), Incheon (2.5m) and Daegu (2.5m). The larger Seoul National Capital Area accounts for almost half the entire national population. One is Seoul, the capital city, which has a population approaching 10m in its own right. It is also a presidential republic divided into 16 regions, seven of which are cities with populations above 1m. South Korea has an area of 99,392 km2 (somewhat smaller than England at 130,395 km2) Whereas Singapore (population 5m) and Hong Kong (population 7m) are much smaller and Shanghai (population 23m) is only about half the size, South Korea has a national population of around 49m people, very close to England’s population of 51m. South Korea is a particularly interesting and relevant comparator for the English because its population is of a very similar size, especially when compared with most of the other ‘Asian Tigers’. For the sake of clarity I will continue to call it South Korea. It forms the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and is not to be confused with North Korea – officially the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea – its neighbour to the north. South Korea is officially the Republic of Korea. My review of the Panel’s Report contains further details – and we will look again at the Korea-specific material in this post.īut we should begin with some basic information about South Korea and its education system, so providing a broad context for the detail to follow. It certainly ignores all vestiges of gifted education, quite possibly for ideological reasons. Unfortunately though, my analysis suggests that the South Korean evidence drawn on by the Expert Panel for that Review is badly out of date. South Korea is listed amongst the ‘high-performing jurisdictions’ whose practice has been examined as part of England’s current National Curriculum Review. Nevertheless, politicians and policy makers are already desperate to emulate the success of all the so-called Asian ‘tiger economies’, and we are no exception. We can expect this gap to narrow significantly in PISA 2012, as a direct consequence of the work currently under way. Korea’s highest achievers are not yet ranked quite as highly in reading and science as their overall ranking suggests, though they are not far behind in maths. In PISA 2009, Korea’s overall rankings were 2 nd in reading, 4 th in maths and 6 th in science.Īs I have noted in an earlier post examining the PISA data, such overall rankings can mask significant variation in the performance of a country’s highest achievers. There is of course continuing international interest in Korean education more generally, as a direct consequence of the country’s exceptional showing in recent PISA assessments. It builds on a much older post from 2010 which reviewed pan-Asian programmes in science-based gifted education, many of them led and co-ordinated by Korean institutions. The country’s efforts in this field deserve to be much better known and celebrated, so I hope that this post will help in some small way. If so, I empathise absolutely from my parallel English perspective.įor South Korea exemplifies beautifully why national investment in gifted education is so important and what significant returns it can generate. I suspect some of my Irish readers would wish their country to emulate South Korea’s thorough, systematic, sustained and very generously funded programme, if only their financial circumstances permitted it. I can’t pretend that there is any logic or even premeditation behind this decision but, as an earnest disciple of E.M Forster’s epigraph to Howard’s End – ‘only connect’ – I have established that there are significant historical links, though perhaps no great similarity in the two countries’ respective approaches to gifted education. Paradoxically, I’m dedicating it to Gifted Education Awareness Week in Ireland! Part Two will take a closer look at some elements of this provision, including several dedicated gifted high schools. Part One covers the development and operation of Korean gifted and talented education at national level. This post reviews the development of gifted education policy and practice in South Korea.
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