“Now, it is an era where quality education cannot be provided without partnerships with private edtech companies. This should not represent the interests of private companies, but the partnership must continue to strengthen.”

Lee Ju-ho, Deputy Prime Minister of Social Affairs and Minister of Education, said this on a TV program aired on Dec 24, regarding the question about the conflicts of interest with private edtech companies that was raised during the personnel hearing by Jeong Je-young, a professor of education at Ewha Womans University.

Prior to his inauguration, Deputy Prime Minister Lee served as the first chairman of the Asia Education Association, a non-profit organization, and emphasized 'Edtech', a combination of education and technology. However, when it was revealed that edtech companies had donated to the association, and that Deputy Prime Minister Lee had also donated funds when he was running as a preliminary candidate in the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education superintendent election held this year, a conflict-of-interest controversy arose. Deputy Prime Minister Lee said, “It is a very good point,” and “I came to work with a little more awareness about that situation. Now I am back in public service and will be very careful.”

However, Deputy Prime Minister made it clear that he cannot think about separating public and private education as before. He said, “In the past, private education and public education were strictly separated and we strived to reduce private education, but now the era of public-private cooperation is clearly coming”, and “In foreign countries, so-called ‘publishers’, educational content companies, not only produce textbooks but also provide AI tutoring services recently Now, educational contents companies are indispensable partners of public education.” Then, he continued, “When it comes to private education, we are very aware of the side effects in areas such as hagwons (private institutes), but now we need to continue strengthening the ‘public-private partnership (public-private collaboration)’.”

When Professor Jeong expressed his opinion, “I wonder if the problem could be solved if schools were able to choose edtech solutions (they want to use), just as schools select textbooks from different publishers,” Deputy Prime Minister Lee also said, “In the case of the UK, teachers can choose (edtech tools they want to use) because of the voucher system. And since there are various systems, it is time for us to institutionalize these things as well.”

Deputy Prime Minister Lee explained that the new “Digital Education Bureau”, which will be established as the first large-scale reorganization of the Ministry of Education in 10 years, will take on this role. He said, “The Digital Education Bureau is an organization with a goal of how to make a great digital transformation, such as partnerships with private education companies and teacher trainings on how to use edtech. In the government, the Ministry of Education is the first to create a bureau in charge of digital transformation, and I have never seen a government in overseas that pursues digital transformation in education with such a large organization.” He added, "We are encouraging the people in charge to say, 'We can become a global first mover' and 'Let's become the best in the world.'"

Regarding the issue of conflicts of interest that may resurface in the process of strengthening partnerships in the future, he said, “this controversy rather became an important device to create a healthy partnership.” He said, “It is about making a partnership for the benefit of parents and students, not for individual public officials to represent the interests of the company, and “In fact, the principle of conflict of interest has never been discussed in the education world. (The controversy) was probably an important message to other public officials.”

Regarding autonomous private high schools and foreign language high schools, he said, “Of course, existing different kind of high schools, such as private high schools and foreign language high schools, will remain,” and expressed his intention to abolish the comprehensive abolition policy promoted by the previous Moon Jae-in administration by 2025. Deputy Prime Minister Lee was the one who strived to expand private high schools during the Moon Jae-in administration.

Source: 이주호 “교육 민관 협력시대···에듀테크로 공교육·사교육 사다리 놓을 것"(서울경제)