South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday ordered his Cabinet to come up with fundamental measures to reduce the nation's soaring private tutoring expenses, which has become a huge financial burden on households.
"I've heard domestic households are increasingly burdened by rising private tutoring expenses. Private educational institutions are accused of excessively raising their fees, though their business is irrelevant to global oil prices," said Lee.
He added that new policy measures are now needed to immediately help ordinary households lessen their private tutoring expenses and instructed Cabinet ministers to investigate current situation in the private education market.
Despite government's repeated efforts to cut private education, the majority of South Korea's elementary and secondary school students are known for flocking to expensive private tutoring institutions.
The survey by the National Statistics Office showed that 77 percent of primary and secondary students were attending various out-of-school classes.
According to the estimation by Hyundai Research Institution, South Korea's extracurricular education market reached 33.5 trillion won (29.1 billion U.S. dollars) as of 2006, accounting for 3.75 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.
The figure is slightly greater than the government's education budget of 31 trillion won.
Hyundai also found average monthly spending on private tutoring by South Korean households is around 646,000 won.
Source:Xinhua
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