North Korean educational authorities have begun demanding that elementary schools modernize by acquiring computers and other relevant equipment, emphasizing the importance of IT-related subjects, Daily NK has learned.
A Daily NK source in North Korea said Monday that the State Education Commission put together analysis material by educational inspectors that have visited schools twice a year since the country adopted its 12-year mandatory education system, and sent the results to provincial departments of education early this month.
“Through the materials, [the commission] suggested measures to correct the tendency over the last five years to teach IT subjects, which are taught from the fourth or fifth grade of elementary school, with little substance, and pointed to how schools were lagging behind in modernization.”
North Korea used to have 11 years of mandatory education – one year of kindergarten, four years of elementary school and six years of middle school.
But in September 2012, after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un came to power, the sixth meeting of the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly adopted legislation that mandated 12 years of education by adding another year to elementary school.
This system went into place from the start of the academic year in 2017.
The goal of adopting 12 years of mandatory education was to improve the quality and quantity of IT subjects by adding a year to elementary school, when students learn the basics.
The source said the authorities initially wanted to emphasize education for gifted students, but they found that over the last five years, the classes were being taught in a perfunctory manner.
The commission found that this was due to shortfalls at some schools in “the material and technological base,” which is to say, they lacked sufficient equipment for IT subjects.
In particular, it reportedly focused the spotlight on the chasm in computer facilities between schools in Pyongyang and those in the provinces, schools in the big cities and those in rural communities, and elementary schools attached to so-called No. 1 senior middle schools — which are of particular interest to the state — and ordinary elementary schools.
In fact, elementary schools in Pyongyang and Haeju, South Hwanghae Province, had the highest computer ownership rates at 63%, while only 6% of elementary schools in Kowon County, South Hamgyong Province and Kosan County, Kangwon Province had computers, indicating seriously low levels of facility modernization.
The source said the analysis data including how some schools “have been crying about how acquiring computers and modernizing equipment needed to teach IT subjects have become non-tax burdens on students.”
“It said the biggest problem was the attitude and perspective of elementary schools that simply complain about conditions while carrying out modernization in a half-hearted way instead of following the state’s educational guidance for the project and order for successfully carrying out early computer education,” he added.
The analysis reportedly criticized how due to computer shortages, some schools still teach only theory, while other schools end classes after letting students sit for a few minutes in front of a computer in shifts, their teachers doing little to stop students from studying other subjects or homework as they wait to use the computer.
In sending the analysis material to provincial departments of education, North Korean educational authorities reportedly set a deadline for elementary schools to modernize, warning that academic inspectors will regularly visit to check how well schools are carrying it out.
Moreover, the materials reportedly said that the academic inspectors found unqualified IT teachers while visiting schools nationwide, particularly emphasizing that it would re-evaluate the general ratings and credentials of elementary school IT teachers in each province by the end of the year.
The source said the criticized teachers “are being called to the department of education to write self-criticism letters.”
“The departments of education are pushing schools, telling them that the party said modernizing schools is the priority policy of the general education sector to improve the quality of IT subject classes,” he said.
However, the source said schools that must modernize through “self-reliance” are responding despondently, complaining that “we must empty the pockets of students who can’t even eat breakfast to buy computers.”
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