"Mom, the truth is I've given up on math"... Parents wasting money on private math academies

[The Financial News] The share of students who see themselves as "students who have given up on math" has surged across elementary, middle, and high schools for the first time in four years. Four out of ten high school students and one out of three middle school students described themselves as having given up on math. The proportion of students who feel stressed because of math was also found to be at an alarming level.

Representative Gang Gyeong-suk of the Rebuilding Korea Party and the education civic group World Without Worries about Private Education (WWWPE) held a press conference at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea on the 27th. There, they released the results of a "survey on perceptions of math education" conducted on November 17–18 last year with 6,358 elementary, middle, and high school students and 294 teachers from 150 schools nationwide.
According to the survey, 30.8% of all respondents answered "yes" to the question, "I want to give up on math."
Broken down by grade, the burden of math increased as students moved up. Among 6th graders in elementary school, 17.9% said they wanted to give up on math, compared with 32.9% of 9th graders and 40.0% of 11th graders. Compared with the same survey in 2021, the shares rose by 6.3 percentage points for 6th graders, 10.3 percentage points for 9th graders, and 7.7 percentage points for 11th graders.
These figures are far higher than the government’s estimate of the share of students who fall below the basic level in math. In the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA), about 12% of students were below the basic level in math. However, among 11th graders, the proportion who saw themselves as having given up on math was more than three times that figure. Two out of ten teachers also responded that "about 20% of the students in my class have already given up on math."
Stress caused by math has also risen sharply. In response to the question, "Do you feel stressed about math?" 80.9% of students said "yes." The shares were 73.0% for 6th graders, 81.9% for 9th graders, and 86.6% for 11th graders. The proportion of elementary school students who said they feel psychological pressure increased by more than 28 percentage points compared with four years ago, prompting concern that the burden of math is now reaching even the lower grades.

Students cited the "high difficulty of math problems" (42.1%) as the biggest reason for giving up on math. This was followed by "poor math grades" (16.6%) and "an overwhelming amount of material to learn" (15.5%). Teachers, on the other hand, pointed to "accumulated learning gaps" (44.6%), "lack of interest and confidence" (29.4%), and "insufficient support from home and the broader social environment" (10.8%) as the main causes.
The burden of learning math has led many students to rely on private tutoring. A total of 64.7% of students said they were receiving private math education. Among them, 32.8% said they did so "to get good test scores," while 24.0% said it was because "it is hard to study alone." Of these students, 85.9% had experience with advanced learning beyond their current grade level, and 30.0% of that group said they "do not understand the material."
WWWPE noted, "The fact that students cite 'excessive difficulty' as the biggest reason for giving up on math is closely related to the current relative grading system used for school academic records and the CSAT." The group added, "From the elementary level, we need measures to prevent students from giving up on math by thoroughly guaranteeing basic academic skills, and at the high school level, it is necessary to clearly specify the level of math learning required for each university major."
y27k@fnnews.com Seo Yoon-kyung Reporter