Autonomy for accountability and the shrinkage of autonomy : The developments and current state of school autonomy policies in Korea

Policies for school autonomy have been implemented for over 15 years in Korea. These policies are for enlarging the autonomy of school in the fields of school governance as well as personnel administration, curriculum, and school finance, which are regarded as the three most important elements of school administration. In Korea, these school autonomy policies have the following goals: to make individual schools, not as administrative institutions, but as agents of change and development, to diversify education program and the forms of school, to raise commitment and creativity of teachers, and to make schools as a kind of community. In the phase of enlarging school autonomy, new policies like the disclosure of school information and student achievement tests, which are focused on accountability of schools, have been carried out since 2008. After that, school autonomy policies in Korea have entered a new stage of development. Due to the accountability policies, schools are more and more subordinate to administrative institutions. Education programs are increasingly standardized rather than diversified; teachers would rather suffer from various mental health problems than try to do her/his duty; let alone the loss of community, as hierarchical relations are being formed in school. In the process of putting forth accountability policies, accountability took the place of autonomy which had been the most important concept of school reform. Furthermore, as the concept of autonomy, the autonomy as the professional commitment, has now been substituted with the autonomy for accountability. As a result, the autonomy of teachers shrank dramatically