Korea to teach entrepreneurship as a separate subject in high schools from 2025

Samsung Group Founder Lee Byung-chull, left, and Hyundai Group Founder Chung Ju-yung [Photo by MK DB]

The South Korean government will teach entrepreneurship as a separate subject to first-year high school students from 2025, allowing them to receive hands-on training on entrepreneurship and broader education on starting a business.

Maeil Business Newspaper has learned Monday that teachers in a task force formed to create an entrepreneurship textbook recommended a curriculum centered on hands-on experience.

The task force was established in the wake of the government’s announcement to develop entrepreneurship textbooks in time for the full implementation of the high school credit system in 2025.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and the Ministry of Education are involved in developing the entrepreneurship textbooks and organizing subjects.

According to the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the current school curriculum includes four subjects related to entrepreneurship – careers and jobs, human and economic activities, inventions and inventors, and careers and entrepreneurship.

There have been criticisms, however, that relevant contents are excessively based on theory.

During the task force meeting, teachers stressed the need to increase the proportion of entrepreneurship contents in the curriculum and pointed out that the textbooks containing entrepreneurship contents must be reorganized.

The idea is to redesign the textbooks to ensure that entrepreneurship is taught through more experiential learning, on-the-job training, and greater amount of education.

Under the current curriculum, students can only learn the definition and simple examples of entrepreneurship. As a result, they simply get a rough idea of what entrepreneurship means and are not able to learn how entrepreneurship is applied in the real world.

The task force members also agreed on how to organize their report on entrepreneurship textbooks for submission to the government. They agreed that the report should contain an analysis on domestic and international best practices of entrepreneurship courses, an analysis of the flow of entrepreneurship education in education policy, an analysis of existing curriculum contents on entrepreneurship, and details needed to apply the learnings in real world situations.

The government plans to complete the entrepreneurship textbooks next year based on the task force report.