Efforts to integrate information on school students in South Korea have caused a major rift among teachers and created a headache for the education minister. The Government has recently set up the National Education Information System (NEIS) to make data from all primary, middle and high schools available through the internet. Following pressure from the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union, Yoon Deok-hong said his ministry would reconsider whether some data should be included. This covered three of the 27 fields on the database – schools’ administration, health and admission affairs.
The union argued that making the information available on the network violated privacy rights. But a larger organisation, the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations, criticised the minister’s action. It said its members would not revert to the old “client-server” system and that 97% of the country’s schools are already using the NEIS.
South Korea's opposition Grand National Party has demanded that the minister should resign over the issue.
The NEIS is one of the 11 e-government projects that the former Kim Dae-jung Government unveiled in 2001. The Government has said it would boost the transparency and efficiency of academic administration.
Quelle: Kablenet
