Labor Market of Vocational Training Teachers and Policy Issues in Korea : Focusing on the Employment Status

The vocational training teachers who support and guide the development of vocational ability of new recruits, unemployed and workers have more various and broad activity areas than the teachers of the general schools. The particularly important of their functions may be the role linking and mediating the demand and supply between job seekers and labor seekers. The vocational training system and the vocational training teacher which perform the traditional vocational training education and are able to train the expert workers with self-directed ability in the study organization and systematic OJT(On-the Job Training are needed. This study analyses the status of the labor market of the vocational training teachers who play the important role for the result of the vocational training and seeks the direction of the policy directions for the vocational training teacher. Many private vocational training institutions in Korea are small-sized, and most training teachers working at the private institutions are temporarily employed only for the period of courses after the courses are approved and trainees are recruited. The average training period overall is very short such as 4~5 months, and the average training period of Individual Training Accounts is only 2 months or so making the employment market of vocational training teachers very insecure. As a result, many of them are shifting their jobs from vocational training to more secured jobs. Furthmore, their initial pay is low, and range of their wage rise based on working experience is relatively small. Vocational training teachers capability and passion decide the training s quality and achievement. Accordingly, we need to take approaches inducing to secure capable training teachers in making related policies to increase the achievement of private-commissioned training programs. To enhance quality and achievement of the training program, and to stabilize the training teachers labor market, competitive atmosphere is needed in the private training institution market centered on training institutions of high quality.