Korea's School System: Part 1 - Public Elementary, Middle, and High School Basics

For this post, I'm going to start to talk a little bit about Korea's school system and how it is setup.  I'm putting this into parts because I'm sure that the longer I am here the more I will learn and discover, so this post is by no-means "all of it".

For starters, Korea has the main 3 levels of schooling: elementary, middle, and high school.

In Korea, they do not have kindergarten and preschool integrated in with the elementary schools (to my current knowledge).  All kindergartens and preschool is at private institutions.  To foreigners (as Korean's call "waygooks"), we may consider this as a "Hagwon", but after mentioning it to a few Koreans they quickly responded that (to them) these are not true Hagwons, but kindergarten institutes.  (*Note: I will talk about what Hagwon's are later).

The school system is set up like this as far as ages and grades:
- Elementary school (start at age 7 and includes grades 1st through 6th).
- Middle school (start at age 13 and students go for 3 years)
- High school (start at age 16 and students go for 3 years)
(*Note: I'm listing the ages according to what their ages would be in a Western Culture rather than their "Korean age".  Their Korean age would be one or two years older than this.)

Testing is heavy in the school system.  To be admitted to middle school, students have to take an exam to see which middle school they will be placed at in their city.  In the smaller towns like Gyeongju or Mokpo that I have worked in of about 250,000 people the city has about 15 or so middle schools.  The schools are all set up according to the level of the students abilities.  The same is true for high school as well, as the students have to take an entrance exam in order to know what high school they will be admitted to.

For middle school and high school, the schools are often divided into boys and girls schools as well.  In the schools that do have both boys and girls in the same school, the classes are typically divided into separate boy and girl classes.  However, I will say that in my classes in Mokpo I do have two classes that are a mix of boys and girls in my 3rd year middle school students.  The reason for this is because, as a result of their English exam the previous school year to place students according to their abilities, the classes were going to be very small and came out uneven between boys and girls so I do have two classes as a mix.  However, in these classes it is not like a class in the United States, as the boys and girls sit on opposite sides of the room.

I do believe that students also need to take an entrance exam for elementary school as well to know what middle school they go to.  This is partially why (I would guess) that there is such a high demand for native English teachers in kindergarten institutes -- because there's just so many of them so gets can get into a good elementary school.

Also, it IS possible for students to just "fail" their entrance exam into elementary, middle, or high school.  In these circumstances, the kids then either stay at the level they are at and learn more or (I suppose) just not go to school until they can pass the exam.  This is really a huge deal though, because then this greatly declines their chances of ever going to college.