- 2 -

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "- 2 -"

진영 준
6 years ago
Views:

1 - 1 -

2 - 2 -

3 회의개요 ( 환영사, 09:00~09:15) Welcoming remarks ( 세션 1, 09:15 09:45) Progress to date on the G20 agenda and collaboration ( 세션 2, 09:45 11:00) Employment, social protection and economic growth: contributing to the G20's growth commitment through our collective priorities

4 ( 세션 3, 11:20~13:00) Panel session with social partners and engagement groups: 'Addressing skills mismatch' ( 세션 4, 14:30~15:40, 16:00~17:30) Progress on country-specific employment plans ( 맺음말, 17:30~17:45) Closing remarks - 2 -

5 ( 세션 5, 09:05~10:00) Youth and apprenticeships ( 세션 6, 10:20~11:30) Preventing unemployment from becoming structural: policy principles and recommendations ( 세션 7, 11:30~12:50) Addressing long-term unemployment: policy principles and recommendations - 3 -

6 ( 세션 8, 14:00~15:20) Addressing skills mismatch: policy principles and recommendations ( 세션 9, 15:40~16:00) Safer workplaces ( 세션 10, 16:00~16:45) Preparations for the G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting - 4 -

7 < 발표문 > Policy Direction and Challenges of Recent VET Reformation in Korea Joo-Seop Kim (Senior Research Fellow, Korea Labor Institute) 1. Background to the Initiative to Improve VET Under the Park Geun Hye government building a meritocratic society became one of the core national agenda in Korea, and there is now a strong drive to overhaul the VET system. But it was since the 1990s that policies to create a society where one is judged by merits (not by the school) have been consistently devised and implemented. The new intellectual development policy under the Kim Dae Jung government and open employment policy under the Lee Myung Bak government were all part of such efforts to replace existing educational elitism to meritocracy in the Korean society. The fact that each successive government defines meritocracy as a key social goal conversely shows that the Korean society still excessively values university schooling. As is well known by now, the percentage of high school graduates moving onto college consistently tops 70% in Korea, making the nation the world s unyielding number 1 since the mid-2000s. The adverse effects of excessive level of higher education are manifested in various ways. The expansion of the private education market and the consequent rise in household spending is often cited as one of the major reasons of the falling birthrate. And more people in education means less young people entering the labor market, lowering the employment rate. And one of the main causes of the job mismatch, jobseekers high expectations, is directly related to the more generalized higher education. More youths trying to attain higher education cannot be said to be wrong in and of itself. And the strong enthusiasm for education could - 5 -

8 be something to be encouraged. After all, Korea s remarkable economic development is commonly attributed to its people s high educational zeal and quality human resources. But the problem is that the thirst for learning is concentrated only to formal schooling at a certain period. And the educational curriculum is little related to the job skills required at industrial sites, which necessitates a considerable re-training cost to enable those fresh out of university to be placed on the job and work productively. According to the Ministry of Education s 2012 Statistical Survey on National Lifelong Education published in 2013, the lifelong education participation rate in Korea stands at a mere 35.6%, lower by 4.8% than the OECD average of 40.4%. In addition, one adult participates in 12 hours of job-related informal education on average, only 2/3 of the OECD average of 18 hours. These results show the imbalance in human capital investment from the perspective of life cycle. Meanwhile, according to the Korea Employers Federation s 2009 survey on 483 companies, it took an average of 19.5 months for new employees with a university diploma to be allocated to real duties, requiring million Korean won in re-training per employee. These results illustrate the serious gap between university education and on-the-job skills. Despite the significant gap between industry needs and university education, why is it that still 7 out of 10 university graduates move onto college? There would be several answers to this, but one of them is that in Korea there is no other way to demonstrate one s skills. Review of several related studies concludes that qualifications as a signaling mechanism alternative to school diploma did provide some advantage in becoming employed, but had little effect on the wage level. Likewise for job training, its effect was found to be minimal. Moreover, the Korean labor market is dualized into the first tier (made up of large companies and the public sector) and the second tier (of SMEs), and there is a considerable wage gap between these two. The Ministry of Employment and Labor s 2012 Workplace and - 6 -

9 Workforce Survey shows that while the average monthly wage of workers in SMEs with employees was million Korean won (1.059 million won higher than 10 years ago), it was million won (1.795 million higher) for those in large companies. SMEs wage level compared to large companies fell from 67.5% in 2002 to 59.9% in 2010 then rose slightly to 64.1% last year, leaving the wage gap 3.4%p larger than 10 years ago. Large companies preference for workers with a university diploma, the worsening wage gap between large companies and SMEs in the past decade, and the lack of social mechanisms that can replace diplomas explain fairly well how university advancement level has been kept so high in Korea during the same period. 2. Highlights of the Proposed VET Reformation Over a decade of policy experience has taught us that halfway measures such as campaign policies or hire them out of high school policy will not be enough to bring the Korean society from school elitism to meritocracy. The fact that the problems of educational elitism persist despite previous policies serves as evidence to that. This is why it is time to undertake a fundamental reform, although its implementation will be met with many challenges. But such fundamental reform will be the only way to ease the quantitative and qualitative mismatch between school education and the labor market, as well as the compensation gap by schooling level. Against this backdrop, the fact that Park Geun Hye government s policy to build a meritocratic society is about broad-based reform is a positive sign that shows that it has set the right course. The highlights of the government s VET reform policy are introduced as follows. A. Developing a National Competency Standard (NCS) and introducing a National Qualification Framework (NQF) - 7 -

10 The NCS is a standardized set of knowledge, skills, attitude and other factors that are required to perform each job, to be compiled and published by the government. The NQF is the government s certification of individuals for their job competency level based on the NCS, by measuring such factors as educational attainment, qualifications and field experience. More specifically, the competencies required in around 12,000 jobs are grouped into 855 items and developed into standards under the NCS, to be certified by the government. In fact, development of NCS began in 2002, completing a total of 331 standards in the past decade. The current government has been more active in developing and utilizing the NCS, adding 250 standards in 2013 alone, and plans to complete the remaining 251 in In schools, learning modules will be developed based on the NCS, to be applied to the curriculum in specialized high schools, meister high schools and colleges. VET programs at educational institutes such as polytech universities will also be revised in accordance with the NCS as early as possible. Because the purpose of developing the NCS is to revise the VET curriculum to best reflect the competencies and skills actually used in industrial fields, many on-the-job experts were enlisted to contribute. One of the policies discussed together with the NCS is the National Qualification Framework (NQF). NQF is a state-determined level of individuals job competency. Needless to say, job competency is made up of a complex set of factors, such as formal schooling, training (formal or informal), career and qualifications, and the purpose of the NQF is to identify which factors have equal value and to have them certified by the government. The European Qualification Framework (EQF) was made in several European countries for the purpose of strengthening the compatibility of skills between them, but in the case of Korea, - 8 -

11 the NQF should serve as a mechanism that can replace school elitism. B. Introduction of Work-based Learning Work-based learning is designed to develop the talent with practical skills required by the industry. It is where businesses hire job-seeking young people and provide systematic training and education at the workplace in cooperation with educational institutes like schools. Upon completing the training and education, the competency of the worker will be evaluated by the state (or the industry) and recognized as a qualification (or degree in the cooperating school). It offers several benefits. For schools, it allows them to provide the kind of education that matches the needs of the labor market (and eases the gap between school education and industrial needs). For businesses, they can develop the kind of practice-oriented human resources they need. For workers, they can engage in work and on-the-job training at the same time, allowing them to learn practical skills while earning a certificate or school diploma. As of Feb. 2014, 104 companies are participating in work-based learning program, with 710 learners/workers. The government s goal is to keep expanding this program, to enlist 10,000 companies by C. Turning Colleges into Lifelong Vocational Skill Development Centers. Decline in the school-age population has created an oversupply of colleges and universities in Korea. Restructuring the university sector is now a call of the time that can no longer be pushed back, and in particular, specialized colleges that serve as higher job training institutes would find it hard to - 9 -

12 simply stay afloat if they took in only new high school graduates. Against this backdrop, restructuring universities and turning colleges into lifelong VET centers appear to be policies that are essential in building a meritocratic society and ensuring sustainability of universities/colleges. 3. Conclusion and Challenges The labor market reform policies discussed above are highly significant, although they are made up of policies based on somewhat unfamiliar concepts. If NCS and NQF are successfully established, Korea will have a social mechanism that can replace the authority of school diplomas, easing the need to go to university simply to ensure career success. And if work-based learning is successfully used more broadly, the mismatch between school education and on-the-job skills will be naturally eased. But the road to success of these policies is daunting and treacherous. The biggest challenge is to elicit support from the industry and put it into a better system. There are not enough experts or groups with the representation and expertise to accurately identify the types and levels of job skills currently used at the industry and reflect them properly in the NCS from the early stage of its development. Moreover, individual companies might find that there are not enough incentives to use NCS or work-based learning, a troublesome fact given that there has to be strong commitment from companies to utilize them for these programs to be firmly established in the Korean society. There may be two ways of overcoming these constraints. First is discovering success cases. Once the NCS and work-based learning begin to be taken up by each sector or company and

13 success cases accumulate, they could be naturally disseminated. Second is building social consensus on introducing these systems. This is especially so for NCS and NQF. If the NCS is not linked to compensation for competency, it clearly will have limitations and revising the compensation scheme can only be done with social consensus

Journal of Educational Innovation Research 2017, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp DOI: (NCS) Method of Con

Journal of Educational Innovation Research 2017, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp.181-212 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21024/pnuedi.27.3.201709.181 (NCS) Method of Constructing and Using the Differentiated National Competency