학업성적을 이유로 한 차별과 교육의 불평등

According to a study by the Korea Youth Policy Institute in 2014, ‘academic performance’ was the type of discrimination most widely suffered by elementary and secondary school students. Although a few relevant cases decided by the National Human Rights Commission allude it, however, ‘discrimination on the basis of academic performance’ has not been explicitly stated or seriously considered as a type of discrimination in law and policy. The Constitution of the Republic of Korea guarantees “equal right to receive education corresponding to their abilities,” reiterating the principle of equality in the context of education, but no active measures have been taken to address this type of discrimination. One of the reasons seems to be that the discrimination based on academic performance is often erroneously legitimatized as a rational discrimination according to one’s abilities, which the Constitution permits. This article analyzes the data of 9,823 elementary and secondary school students and explores the features and effects of discrimination based on the academic performance. It reveals that ‘discrimination based on academic performance’ in Korean society is characterized as one that favors students with excellent academic performance over those with poor academic performance in broad context of school life. The problem is that the meaning of ‘academic performance’ in schools goes beyond a measure for educational purposes and becomes a standard that determines status or class in schools by which students are treated differently. Therefore, as a few local governments have adopted ‘academic performance’ as a prohibited ground for discrimination in their ordinances, this article argues that legislators should consider explicitly stipulating academic performance as a prohibited ground for discrimination and that educational authorities should take positive measures to combat this type of discrimination.