The Education Committee, the Cabinet entity charged with overseeing state education in North Korea, plans not only to divide the country’s existing six-year ‘middle school’ system in two, as announced following the Supreme People’s Assembly session on September 25th, but also to divide the final three years into two types dependent upon grades.
Under the changes ratified by the SPA last month, North Korea’s 11-year compulsory education system is to be expanded to 12 years, moving from what is described in North Korea as one year of kindergarten, four years of elementary school and six years of middle school to one year of kindergarten, five years of elementary school, three years of lower middle school and three years of upper middle school.
A Hoiryeong source told Daily NK on Friday, “Based on the details of the education policy from the Education Committee, it is clear that all students from kindergarten to lower middle school will be taught the same curriculum, but the upper middle school process will be divided into two separate types under which the curriculum will be totally different.”
“Students will be placed according to their test results,” the source went on. “One will be an academic stream for students with good grades who are going to attend college, and the other will teach vocational classes.”
Naturally, there are doubts about the intention behind the move, according to the source. Notably, much rides on whether it will be fairly administered, or whether the academic stream will simply replace the current ‘No. 1 Senior Middle School’ system of elite institutions for the children of Party cadres and other elite families.
In addition, in most countries a student’s educational achievements and/or creativity decide his or her future, including in terms of employment; however, in North Korea such things are often decided according to ‘songbun’, the unique system of discrimination that assigns life opportunities based on ancestral loyalty to the Kim regime. Therefore, the concern is that the new system may simply add a new layer of discrimination to an already highly discriminatory regimen.
“The education cadres are saying that this measure is to create the kind of school that can produce the technically skilled people the country needs,” the source went on. “However, since those in the vocational process cannot go to university, one could be forgiven for thinking that this is just a way to push certain groups into labor.”
To put it another way, as one former teacher in North Korea noted, “It just means that the students who cannot go to school because they are struggling to survive will end up going into vocational education.”
