실업계고교 재정지원 사업 성과분석 및 개선방안

Abstract

본 연구는 그간 교육인적자원부와 시 · 도교육청에서 실업계고교의 체제 개편과 교육 내실화를 위해 추진해 왔던 재정지원 사업의 성과를 분석하고, 향후 재정지원 사업의 내용과 재정지원 방식의 개선방안을 모색하는 데 그 목적이 있다.

1. Overview Efforts must be made to enhance the competitiveness of vocational high schools in Korea. One of these efforts should be an assessment of the current state of policies and financial support systems that aim to upgrade vocational high schools. Financial assistance can be given differentially based on the regular evaluation of vocational high schools. Granting subsidy based on performance can help motivate each institution to work on their competitiveness. It is important to find out whether government policies on these schools are properly implemented, especially in schools that have made changes to their educational system and/or the departments. It would also be useful to analyze in-depth the different types of reform their process and results to lend meaningful lessons to schools planning to carry out similar reform. Information on the state of vocational schools should be gathered and organized to persuade the Ministry of Planning and Budget to allocate financial support for these schools. Such data can also be used to buttress demand expressed by the relevant ministry for budget to subsidize these schools. With the exception of funding allocated to reorganizing specialized high schools, different forms of financial support for reforming vocational schools generally have short histories of two to three years maximum. It is unreasonable to assess within such short period of time what each has achieved and to determine whether or not to carry on with the project. Nevertheless, a mid-course reality check on how such initiatives have fared and what they have accomplished as a result can greatly help in deciding how they should be pursued in the future. This research was conceived as such a reality check. It seeks to analyze what the MOEHRD and local education offices have achieved by giving financial aid to vocational high schools that are pursuing an organizational reform and educational quality enhancement. Furthermore, the research aims to present a viable plan to make financial aids more meaningful, in terms of content and manner. With the above goals in mind, researchers reviewed relevant documents and literature, conducted in-depth interviews with administrators and faculty of vocational high schools, observed classes in session, and held seminars with experts in the field. 2. Implementation and Evaluation 1) MOEHRD classified financial aid to vocational high schools first into three categories: organizational reform, specialization and quality upgrade, and curriculum reform in agricultural and fishery high schools. Under these categories are 10 projects with specific goals. These are: reforming specialized high school, establishing integrated high schools, reorganizing vocational departments into cutting edge skills departments, running schools that design and manage curriculum autonomously, providing industry training for vocational instructors, expanding home economics department, increasing and upgrading equipment, setting up skills practice centers for sharing among schools, granting scholarship for vocational high school students, supporting Yeoju Independent Agricultural High School, and aiding curriculum reform in agricultural and fishery high schools. The MOEHRD has dramatically reduced the financial aid given to these projects from 99.54 billion won in 1998 to 54.50 billion won in 1999 and more gradually down to 50.25 billion won in 2000. While the government's financial support for vocational schools is an important initiative for both developing competent and skilled workforce and for promoting vocational education, a number of problems impede the allocation of the government funds for these aims. Two of these problems are rooted in the way government provides aid to schools. Currently, the subsidy is distributed by the local educational offices without careful consideration of which school should benefit from how much grant. Moreover, financial aid is decided based on the annual expenditure the school projected in its statement. Therefore, it is difficult to concentrate funding on the schools of higher performance. Third problem is that the financial support does not effectively attract the strategic projects carried out by the government. Fourth, the total amount of financial aid given to schools is continually decreasing. Last and not least, the Ministry of Planning and Budget holds that financial aid for vocational schools should be reduced further if not stopped altogether. To work out the existing difficulties the government has come up with a plan to evaluate schools and use the results to determine how much support will be given to them. This plan will be implemented starting 2003 and gradually the government hopes to expand the scope of schools covered by this plan. Exceptions are those projects that are better carried out when funding is given equally. These include: launching the integrated high schools, providing opportunities for vocational instructors to receive industry training and supporting Agricultural Education Center in Yeoju Independent Agricultural High School. 2) It was found that local education offices varied in the amount of funding they expended on the above 10 projects launched by MOEHRD. The difference reflected the fiscal state of the local region. Until 2002, MOEHRD parceled out funding to local education offices based on the number of schools and students in the communities they administered to. The result was an imbalance of financial support: education offices in the wealthier cities and provinces were capable of providing larger support than did those in the poorer regions. The government aid also favored schools in the wealthier cities and provinces. Each local education office has its own independent financial aid project to promote the 10 objectives identified by the 10 project plans. 3. Outcomes A survey was conducted to find out what were achieved by financially assisting vocational high schools. The survey aimed to collect the opinions on the government scheme to aid these schools and found the following: 1) In the case of specialized high schools, providing specialized curricula that aim to raise students into professionals was believed to be its greatest achievement. 2) The integrated high school initiative has been most effective in diversifying the learner's choice of school. 3) Financial aid for autonomous curriculum management served positively in reflecting the learning demands of students and their parents and in training skilled workforce that the industrial society needs. Other positive outcomes include improvement in the methods of instruction and learning and expertise of instructors. 4) Supporting the reorganization of departments in vocational high schools into cutting-edge skills departments has been effective in improving school image, making education more learner-centered and raising student satisfaction. 5) Financial assistance to providing industry training to instructors has helped establish a system of school-industry collaboration (upgrading the methodology of on-the-job training in industries and the quality of training programs, increasing employment of graduates of vocational high schools, etc.). 6) Supporting the expansion of home economics department resulted in increasing the number of agricultural high schools in the city or commercial high schools offering the major option as part of their reform. 7) Subsidies for increasing and upgrading equipment and facilities contributed to improving the learning environment in vocational high schools and maximizing the effectiveness of experimentation and practice. 8) Assisting the establishment and management of skills practice centers for sharing among schools allowed for the use of expensive cutting edge equipment in training of instructors as well as students. Such practical form of education enhances its effectiveness both of the delivery of vocational education and of public investment made in this sector. 9) Providing scholarship to vocational high school students helped attract students with potential to choose the vocational education pathway while assisting poor students to complete school. 10) Reorganizing curriculum in agricultural and fishery high schools helped enhance the school image and increased the employability of students in the local industry. 4. Ways to Improve the Effectiveness of Financial Aid to Vocational High Schools Improving the effectiveness of financial aid provided to vocational high schools is significant in the following four aspects: 1) Vocational high schools must adapt quickly to the changing educational environment and reorganize themselves around new and progressive educational roles. To stabilize the educational system of these schools, to consolidate their raison d'tre and to make them competitive, the government must set aside a regular budget for aiding these schools. 2) The outcome of the financial aid initiative should not be superficial changes, such as formal modification of system or reorganization of curriculum, that have little meaningful consequence. Financial aid should produce tangible results in specializing vocational schools and enhancing the quality of education they provide. 3) The various suggestions for improving the financial aid scheme at the national and the local levels and the actual plans based on these suggestions for administrative and financial assistance should serve as ways in which the government successfully and continuously conducts system reform, educational specialization and quality enhancement, as well as effectively monitoring the process. 4) Financial aid currently in effect should be refashioned into mid- to long-term projects based on mid- to long-term plans for improving vocational schools. Moreover, the government should move from aid that which focuses on school system reform, to one which focuses on specialized industries that have local characteristics. This research presents two sets of measures for making financial assistance to vocational schools more effective: measures that generally apply and measures that are aimed at making evaluation more meaningful. General measures for improvement include: 1) mid- to long-term planning for financially assisting vocational high schools, 2) securing a stable source of funding to provide financial aid, 3) keeping a balance in distributing subsidy, 4) modifying the timing of government subsidy allocation, 5) distinguishing between nationally-funded projects and locally-funded strategic projects, and 6) securing qualified instructors with expertise in professional subjects. Each of the following individual financial aid projects can be improved by pursuing certain measures (some of which are summarized in the parentheses): 1) aid to specialized high schools (a. reorganizing into specialized high schools linked to local strategic industries or refocusing of curricula on those industries; b. strengthening support for special activities or venture start-up clubs that are related to vocational subjects) 2) aid to integrated high schools (a. supporting the stabilization of effective career guidance; b. promoting the awareness and understanding of integrated high schools), 3) aid to autonomous curriculum management schools (a. assisting the development of curriculum and instruction-learning material on instructor initiative; b. strengthening the principal's power to develop and offer program in his/her school; c. other financial aid to support the autonomous management of program), 4) aid for reorganizing vocational and cutting-edge skills department (a. increasing and upgrading equipment and facilities for newly organized departments; b. securing new pool of instructors for professional departments; c. solving problems concerning temporary teachers), 5) aid for providing industry training for instructors (a. increasing diversity of industries serving as training providers; b. developing training program focused on skills needed in the actual workplace), 6) aid for enlarging the home economics departments (a. providing on-the-job training to existing home economics instructors; b. hiring new professional skills practice instructors; c. providing facilities and equipments), 7) increasing and upgrading equipment (a. expanding the autonomy of school in the purchase of equipment), 8) establishing practice centers for sharing among schools (a. providing compensation to teachers who work in the practice centers; b. making practice center facilities distinct by furnishing them with equipment different from that of the schools; c. allowing flexibility in the time it takes to complete a training program at the practice centers), 9) granting scholarships to students in vocational high schools, 10) assisting the reorganization of departments in agricultural and fisheries high schools, etc. A comprehensive plan to financially aid vocational high schools includes the following strategies: 1) financial and administrative support for reforming and enhancing the quality of education (systemizing financial assistance to vocational high schools, support from the MOEHRD, support from the local municipal or provincial education office for reform), 2) setting up an office with exclusive mandate to work on vocational education and strengthening its capacity, 3) designating best practice schools among those that have successfully executed their reform plans, 4) forming a special support team involved in evaluation of reform outcomes. To make the process of evaluation and making use of the evaluation results more effective, the following strategies are recommended: 1) establishing a system to evaluate what government subsidy for vocational high school has achieved, 2) reviewing evaluation criteria that have been chosen to reflect the local characteristics and making them more objective, 3) announcing plans for evaluation and establishing the justification for why evaluations must take place, 4) streamlining the recognition of best practice schools based on evaluation, 5) unifying the evaluation of project outcomes and the evaluation by local education authorities, 6) resolving problems concerning differential support using evaluation results, 7) promoting meaningful use of evaluation results. 5. Suggestions To make the strategies and plans that have been outlined here to bear fruit, the government must make a number of efforts. The first of these is an effort to set a long-term vision under which all financial assistance to vocational high schools could contribute to establishing vocational high schools as distinct educational institutions with their raison d'tre. The long-term vision should also aim at enhancing the quality of education provided in these schools. When such a vision and objectives have been set, the government should then develop a long-term plan to financially assist the vocational schools. Subsequent to the above should be an effort to maintain consistency and continuity of financial aid policies. To make sure that the policies are implemented effectively, it is also necessary that the government monitors the progress in implementation and assesses the outcome; And it is important that these efforts are made continually. Finally, the government should always keep it in mind that supporting vocational high schools through subsidies should be an ongoing project until they establish themselves as members of the education sector that have a unique role and performance to prove that they are serving it properly.