The government next year will cut the number of full-time employees at regional educational offices by 5 percent and will either close or consolidate 106 public elementary, middle and high schools across the country in a bid to boost competitiveness in the nation’s long-criticized educational sector, Yonhap News said Saturday.
The plan comes as President Lee Myung-baqk pledges to restructure and deregulate the overall economy. Most public and private business circles are under pressure to step up restructuring efforts.
A growing number of South Korean private colleges, largely in provincial areas, have lived on state aid as they struggle to draw students. It will be inevitable for these schools to be included in the government’s restructuring plan.
The move, however, is seen not associated with the widening economic difficulty as the Education Ministry plans to hire some 50,000 part-timers at schools and education offices, including 5,000 English conversation lecturers, 18,000 after-school activity instructors, and 1,500 interns throughout its regional offices.
The government also plans to increase English-language classes in elementary schools, boost support for universities that specialize in research in green and alternative energies and install prominent foreign scholars as heads of science research agencies, Yonhap said.