Hundreds of lessons on the state-run Educational Broadcasting System for middle school students became available for free on Monday. The Education Ministry said the measure is aimed at slashing the sky-high cost of extracurricular education.
Around 1,300 lectures on Korean, English, math, history, science, ethics and other subjects are available on the EBS website.
The ministry and Korea Communications Commission will jointly foot the expenses for the classes, for which EBS had charged subscription fees of around 710,000 a year. Online classes for high-schoolers are already free.
The broadcaster said some 314,000 subscribers will be refunded their pre-paid subscription.
/Newsis
The ministry announced a package of measures last month aimed at lowering the cost of private after-school education, which is practically compulsory in Korea amid fierce competition in the university entrance exam. It promised that all of this year’s university entrance exam questions will come from EBS lectures, aiming to reduce the reliance of students on expensive private crammers to ace the notoriously difficult test.
EBS also said it will come up with new classes that meet the needs of students and produce 3,000 more this year alone.
According to Statistics Korea, Koreans spent a record W26 trillion last year on private crammers (US$1=W1,266).
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