The Constitutional Court decided Thursday the current law preventing private tutoring that has been in force since July 30 1980 is unconstitutional. As a result, private lessons will be fully permitted from today. The whole judging committee of the constitutional court stated that there were extreme violations, beyond necessity, of the people's basic rights, such as the rights to educate one's children, in judging two cases of unconstitutional legislations and a constitutional law appeal. The ruling took note the Seoul District Court's recommendation of the unconstitutionality of the private institution and management law article 3 and article 22 paragraph 1 sub-section 1.
Seoul District Court judge, Kim Chang-suk, had recommended that the private institution and management law should be adjudicated on by the Constitutional Court in November 1998. Kim noted that treating, even desirable tutoring activities as a criminal act just because they were not applicable to exception claises iwas an extreme violation of rights.
Most of Kim's peers were confident that the law was 100% unconstitutional, believing that in principle it was clearly against the constitution to prevent people from taking private lessons. Following this Kim Yong-jin, an honorary professor at Seoul National University's Music College and some other professors sent petitioned the Constitutional Court stating that the law prohibited giving individual lessons to students, despite practice sessions being part of the university course and not a private lesson.
In spite of this the Constitutional Court took its time making a decision, considering that it would turn over the Education Ministry's two decade policy preventing people from giving or taking private tutoring. The decision was to have been made in March, but was delayed until April 26. Some people argued that the court was delaying on purpose because a decision calling the law unconstitutional could anger middle and lower class people, who wish to see the private lessons banned, which could have affected voting in the general elections.
Private tutoring first became a social problem in the late 1960's, when elementary school education became compulsory and a bottle-neck in entering middle school created keen admission competition and overheated private tutoring. To solve the problem, the middle-school admission system was changed into one where no entrance exams was necessary.
However, the free ticket to middle school caused competition to enter prestigious high schools so in 1974 a system equalizing all high schools was introduced. This brought about a large percentage of students going to high school and created another competition to enter university which swept the whole country with a wave of private tutoring.
The outcome was the government's order to completely forbid private lessons all together. In 1980, the national protection emergency management committee announced the so-called July 30 Education Reform, which prohibited private lessons in the name of normalizing education and removing the overheated private tutoring practices. In August 1980, all students were forbidden to take private lessons at home and supplementary classes at school. A control task was formed to crackdown on illegal private tutoring on a national scale. But this only raised the cost of private lessons that were held in clandestine and had risks to consider.
The total prevention of private tutoring then slowly eased as lessons for arts and physical education, mechanical and technical fields, and hobby activities were permitted in 1981; supplementary lessons for children with learning disorders were allowed in 1983; senior high school students could attend foreign language private institutes during the winter vacation from 1984; and schools' supplementary lessons were revived in 1988. University students were permitted to give private lessons again and students could attend private institutes during the school breaks in 1989. Then students could attend private institutes even during the school semesters in 1991, and private lessons given by graduate-school students became legalized in 1996. Now with today's decision of the Constitutional Court stating the preventing private tutoring is a violation of the constitution, private lessons are finally reinstated after two decades.
In related news the Ministry of Education (MOE) announced the results of its 1999 Private Education Cost Survey on 27,179 teachers and parents, and 13,410 elementary, and high-school students. The survey showed that 55 out of 100 (55%) students were receiving private lessons and that nationwide, an average of W865,000 was spent a year for each student, amounting to some W6.77 trillion. This was the first time the MOE has conducted a direct survey on private lesson costs.
The survey showed that W3.14 billion was spent for private lessons of elementary-school children, W1.9 billion for middle-schoolers and W1.72 trillion for high-schoolers. Per student, the annual private tutoring costs for elementary-school children was W79,9000, middle-school students W1.006 million, and high-school students W857,000.
(Yang Keun-man, yangkm@chosun.com)
