Korea needs to boost support for edutech industry: report

The Korea International Trade Association on Sunday released a report on the growing international education technology market, encouraging the government to help local firms enter overseas markets.

The education technology market is an area that offers new educational products and systems -- such as virtual classroom solutions -- by utilizing cutting-edge internet of things technologies to enhance the classroom experience.

The international smart education market is expected to grow from $153 billion in 2018 to $342 billion in 2025, according to the KITA report.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has also accelerated demand in the market, as many schools closed and began adopting remote classroom solutions to cope in the coronavirus pandemic, the report said. According to data from UNESCO, 49 nations closed their schools, and around 391 million students are being affected by the unprecedented lockdown.

The KITA report suggests the government needs to increase its support for local firms as local demand decreases.

Korea’s school-age population in 2020 is around 6.7 million. The figure is, however, expected to fall to 5.9 million in 2025 and 5.2 million in 2030.

The compound annual growth rate of the Korean smart education market from 2015-18 was 3.3 percent, falling behind that of the global market at 4.6 percent from 2015-2020.

The report said the government is required to make policy changes to allow more diverse solutions to be introduced in the market. Currently, only a few smart education solutions are authorized by the Education Ministry and regional education offices and are actually used at public schools.

KITA’s report added that the government needs to ease restrictions so that local firms can have better access to the National Education Information System’s student data for their research.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)