Fulbright U.S. Education Center

CNN and other media covered the inauguration last week of a new English Education City on the island province of Jeju.  The central idea of the project is to create a city where elementary, middle and high schools—and eventually universities–teach all of their courses in English.  Top-notch schools from outside Korea are being invited to participate in the project.  One of the first is Britain’s North London Collegiate School.

The English Education City aims to reduce the need for Korean families to send their children oveseas for an English-language education.  Jeju officials say annual tuition will be somewhere between U.S. $3,100 and U.S. $4,700 or about half the amount South Korean parents would be paying to send their children overseas.

The English language market in Korea has already resulted in 21 “English Villages” around the country. Next month, an English village capable of schooling some 5,000 children will open in the southern city of Keoje.  Although more such projects are popping up, the Jeju Global Education City is by far the most ambitious.

Both The Korea Times and The Joongang Ilbo have articles on a new TOEIC cheating scandal uncovered by police.  The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency detained two suspects, named Kim and Park, on charges of raking in some 50 million won ($38,750) from 28 university students and job seekers in exchange for using electronic devices to send test takers answers during the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC).  The scheme worked as follows:

• Kim would place a posting on the internet 20 days before a TOEIC exam, guaranteeing customers a high score on the exam.
• Upon receiving replies, he would explain the scheme to potential customers, after checking to be sure they had no police officers in their family.
• Customers were given the choice of two methods to receive answers during the test, either by text message on a cellphone, or via a small earphone, the size of a grain of rice.
• On the test date, Park, who is fluent in English, would enter the test site wearing an antenna resembling a necklace.  He would use a small wireless device with buttons to send answers to Kim, using a code of one buzz for A, two for B and so forth.  Then Kim would announce the answer to the examinee through the earphone.

According to the Korea Times, test takers who previously scored an average of 500 points, raised their scores to over 900 points.  Most of them were in their 20s and 30s, 13 jobseekers, nine office workers and six university students.

This is not the first cheating scandal for TOEIC in Korea.  Also, it should raise a red flag for everyone connected with the administration of TOEFL and other high stakes academic tests.    Because the benefits of a high score (the “stakes”) are so high in English testing, there is no substitute for thorough, consistent and intelligent application of test security measures.

As reported in the Korea Times today, Korea ranked second from the bottom worldwide in the General Training Module (GTM) for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), according to the British Council.  The number of Koreans taking IELTS increased to 27,000 last year, up from 23,000 in 2007 and 14,000 in 2006.   Last year Korean test takers gained an average score of 5.33 out of 9 on the GTM, up 0.12 from the previous year.   This placed it ahead of only the United Arab Emirates, which had an average score of 4.55.   Testing experts claim that Korea’s low scores are partly due to the large number of elementary and middle school students who take the test.

IELTS tests are held in over 500 centers around the world and some 12 million people take the test every year.

An online tutoring service started in the year 2000 was founded by a former tutor at a private education institute.  His inspiration for the company came while watching a home-shopping channel on television and he intended to help reduce the education inequality that is produced when nearly eight in ten students supplement public education with study in private cram schools, or hagwons.  As noted in a New York Times article by Choe Sang-Hun, Megastudy.net, the online tutoring service Mr. Son Joo-eun started, may be the perfect convergence of South Korean’s dual obsessions with educational credentials and the internet.  By tapping into those concerns, which increase during a recession, Megastudy has become South Korea’s fastest growing technology company, with sales expected to grow 22.5 percent this year to 245 billion won ($195 million) even as the country’s economy is expected to contract.

Online commercial services like Megastudy charge a relatively small fee, averaging 40,000 to 50,000 won ($30 to $40) for each course a student selects from thousands of online tutorials.   Megastudy competes with the government sponsored EBS, which offers similar tutorials for free.    However, it hires teachers with followings that rival those of pop stars.  Last year one Megastudy teacher generated 10 billion won (nearly $8 million) and pocketed 23 percent as his share.

With the country pouring billions of dollars into making the internet ten times faster by 2014, Mr. Son suggested that the world turn to South Korea for a glimpse of what education might look like in the future.  ”Offline schools will become supplemental to online education,” he predicted.  ”Students will go to school, perhaps once a week, for group activities like sports.”