Evaluation of Vocational Training - Republic of Korea

Source: Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET)

The evaluation of vocational training in Korea was initiated by the government in 1998. It was undertaken in order to enhance the quality of training with the proliferation of training institutions for the re-employment training of unemployed workers and with the opening of the training market. In particular, the evaluation system is currently being utilized as a method of assessing the management of re-employment training carried out in over 1000 institutions. It is also needed to identify training courses of higher quality for a differentiated distribution of financial support in terms of training quality.

The Ministry of Education's evaluation of vocational training in 1998 and 1999 took place in the colleges that implemented training for unemployed workers. The Ministry of Information and Communication also carried out an evaluation of its investments in vocational training - in the shape of financial support for colleges. In addition, local administrative offices have recently begun evaluating vocational training that it delegates to other institutions. Under the Workers' Vocational Training Promotion Act, local administrations have set aside budgets for vocational training evaluation and commissioned the evaluation project to a suitable organization since 1999. Because vocational training evaluation is carried out by various institutions, problems of inconsistency arise form the fact that each evaluative criteria and standards differ. Despite such difficulties, however, efforts are made to remedy the revealed shortcomings, and the significance of evaluation is gaining more salience.

Measures to alleviate some of the dysfunctional aspects of managing vocational training evaluation are found in case studies of systematic evaluation projects in other countries. Based on these lessons, government policies to systematize vocational training evaluation in Korea are strongly recommended in order to improve the quality of vocationaltraining. The evaluation system may also be used for basic material for policymaking on vocational training. The intended goal is to achieve consistency, credibility, and utility in vocational training evaluation, and also to reduce costs by obviating unnecessarily overlapping evaluation.

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