I've never been particularly renowned for my mathematics ability, but I hope you'll forgive some generalisations here about education costs and look beyond it to a bigger picture.
Korea has, by most estimates, 20,000 native English speakers teaching English across its combined public school, private institute, and university sectors.
On average (and I'm attempting to be very conservative here), these teachers do about 1,000 teaching hours per year, and cost about USD 30,000 per year (each) to the Korean education industry. Or, USD 30 per hour of English instruction.
So, at a very rough estimate, the equation for access to native speakers comprises about 20 million teaching hours at an overall cost of USD 600 million. Per year.
What if we kept certain numbers constant but changed the delivery of English language instruction to an online format?
Let's say, instead of having 20,000 native speakers in Korea, we had the instruction happen online, and paid teachers (comfortably set in their home countries) USD 25 per hour of "beamed in" instruction to whole classes.
Most Korean classrooms are already wired up with Internet access. There is also ready access to things like IWBs. With some initial outlay, getting Korean classrooms prepared for webcam and audio connected lessons would not be a major problem.
Anyway, we're looking at an instant saving of USD 100 million. Per year.
I won't even attempt to estimate what the saving would be in terms of time, especially for those poor Korean teachers who have to run about finding accommodation for the imports, helping them to buy toilet paper when they arrive, and somehow trying to explain the unique Korean work culture to them (often on a daily basis over an entire year).
Let's say, instead of seeing that 100 million dollars as a saving, we look to re-invest it more effectively into the English education framework in Korea...
50 million dollars would probably fund the hiring of another 1,500 local English teachers per year, which would absolutely have an impact on the generally appalling teacher to student ratios in Korean schools.
The other 50 million dollars would allow (through scholarships) up to about 3,000 local teachers to spend 6-12 months abroad in English speaking settings to improve their English skills and quite possibly their teaching qualifications.
That's per year, mind you.
There are definitely some holes here and there in the maths, but to me it is still a bit of a no-brainer.
Countries like Korea seriously need to consider the potential and the benefits of having their native speaker teachers on a screen, freeing up more time for the local teachers but also more funds. Funds which would facilitate employment of more local teachers and help to develop their English ability so that they can actually look ahead to a more self-sustainable English education framework.
Image at top of post used with permission:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ari/3730940027/
