Supplementary Classes: EBS Works, Private Institutions Are Crying Out

High school students who are preparing for the state-run college entrance examination and taking publicly-broadcast EBS online lectures prefer the middle level of lectures, rather than primary and high level lectures. Sorting by categories, students watch lectures for linguistic fields most, followed by foreign languages, mathematical fields, and scientific investigation fields.

This is the result of Dong-A Ilbo’s analysis based on data on sales of EBS lecture materials.

As the Ministry of Education and Human Resources and the Korea Institute of Curriculum & Evaluation are set to base EBS online lectures on the state-run college entrance examination, the attitude of exam-preparing students to their lectures is likely to be reflected in setting questions for the exam.

Lecturers in middle level classes are current teachers in high school and, in primary and in high, include popular lecturers in private institutions and current teachers in schools. The linguistic, foreign language, and mathematical fields are classified in accordance with their levels, while the scientific investigation field has no classification.

The middle level lectures are the most popular. According to outcomes of an EBS survey on reactions to online lectures on April 8, the most popular lecture is the “EBS special lecture for the college entrance exam in the field of foreign language,” with 69,815, followed by the “EBS special lecture for the college entrance exam in the linguistic field” with 67,993. The Comprehensive Lecture for Language filled the third spot with 62,850. The number of those downloading and taking online lectures also shows that middle level of class is more popular than the others.

Those registered are only qualified to take up to 30 EBS online lectures.

The number of students taking lectures which took upper spots, including the first, the second, and the third, was the highest in the linguistic fields with 188,837, followed by foreign language with 174,851, the mathematical with 161,018, and social scientific investigation with 105,625.

Lecture materials in the middle level were also sold more. As of April 20, 73 materials published by the EBS were sold including 42 in middle level and 31 in high and primary levels.

EBS has published 4.62 million copies which have hit the market and, of these, it is estimated that 3.234 million copies, or 70 percent, will be sold. Of these, 2.202 million copies are for middle level, two times more than those for high and primary levels with only one million sales.

By field, in terms of copies for middle level, materials for social scientific investigation sold approximately 696,000, mathematical sold approximately 674,000, linguistic sold approximately 615,000, foreign language sold approximately 596,000, and scientific investigation sold approximately 589,000.

In terms of copies for primary and high levels, the linguistic field sold approximately 473,000, foreign language sold approximately 400,000, mathematical sold approximately 351,000, social scientific investigation sold approximately 137,000, and scientific investigation sold approximately 84,000.

Why do they prefer middle level lectures? Lecturers in primary and high level classes had a relatively short time to prepare materials and lectures since they were recruited late. Automatically then, the quality of material is relatively low. This is cited as the main reason.

A teacher who has been involved in setting EBS materials said, “I have heard that while materials for middle level classes are published by experienced editors with know-how, those for high and primary level class are finished up within about ten days.”

It is also believed that materials for middle level classes, which are written by current teaching professionals, are more frequently referred to when setting questions for the college entrance exam than materials for high and primary levels, which are written by private institution lecturers.

Seong-Chul Hong Hyo-Lim Son sungchul@donga.com aryssong@donga.com