Policy Effect Analysis of Free Semester Program : Focusing on School Factors

Analysis of the effects of the free semester system on academic achievement and career maturity

“…First, it was found that the experience of the free semester system in the period of the first year of middle school had statistically significant effects on the academic achievement and career maturity of middle school students in Korean language, English, and mathematics subjects. The results of analysis in this study as such are consistent with the results of existing studies indicating that the free semester system had positive effect on academic achievement (Kim, 2016;Kim et al, 2019;Cho et al, 2018) and career maturity (Joo and Kim, 2018;Moon and Jeong, 2020). Whereas the previous studies as such analyzed the effects of experience of the free semester system up to the first or second year of middle school, this study analyzed the average effect over the 3 years from the first to the third year of middle school after the implementation of the free semester system.…”

“…First, contrary to concerns that the free semester system will lower academic achievement, there are study findings indicating that the free semester system has a positive effect on academic achievement. The positive effects of the free semester system on academic achievement were found to appear not only in the short-term during the first year of middle school but also in the long-term during the second year of middle school (Cho et al, 2018; Joo and Kim, 2018; Kim, 2017; Kim et al, 2019).…”

“…However, existing studies that analyzed the effects of the free semester system thus far have mainly focused on the average effect on academic achievement, career development, etc. (Kim et al, 2019; Eo, 2015; Cho et al, 2018), and even those studies that focused on the differential effects on students mainly took notice of differences in academic achievements between household incomes or differences in satisfaction levels (Kim, 2018; Park and Choi, 2018). Studies on the differential effects of the free semester system according to the differences by student’s level that can verify the social concerns about the “rich-get-richer and the poor-get-poorer” phenomenon raised above are insufficient.…”