Gov't to impose state accounting on kindergartens

By Kim Jae-heun

Private kindergartens will have to adopt a state-run accounting system for public institutes by 2020 as part of government measures to improve their transparency.

Kindergartens planning to suspend operations or refusing to admit new students in protest of the measures will face administrative action or even a police investigation.

The government and ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) announced these measures to eradicate irregularities at private kindergartens, after a lawmaker recently disclosed widespread corruption among private preschool owners, including accounting fraud and budget misappropriation.

According to the plan, 600 large private kindergartens will have to use the state's Edufine accounting system starting March next year, and its adoption will be expanded to smaller institutes by 2020.

While public kindergartens and schools have used the system, private preschools have been doing their own books, resulting in accounting fraud and misappropriation of government subsidies.

Many education insiders have frequently stated that private kindergartens need to adopt Edufine, which allows the government to watch purchases made at all public education institutes in real time.

The government will also revise the law to punish those who use subsidies for non-education purposes, allowing it to file embezzlement charges against them. While the administration currently allocates 2 trillion won ($1.8 billion) in education expenses to kindergartens, the recent revelation by Rep. Park Yong-jin of the DPK showed that their owners misused the money to spend on themselves.

If the law is revised, employees misusing such subsidies can be jailed for up to two years or fined 20 million won.

The government also plans to set up qualifications for kindergarten owners, banning those whose preschools had been shut down previously due to irregularities from opening “new ones” through name changes.

As some kindergartens have threatened to suspend their operations or not take on new students for next year to protest the recent accusations, the government decided to take stern punitive action by closing them down in the middle of the semester.

“Operation suspensions led by kindergarten owners' groups are in violation of the law on fair trade, and will face stern sanctions,” Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said. “Regional education offices will give administrative orders for sudden closures in the middle of the semester or halting of recruitment, as well as filing complaints with the police if the institutes refuse to follow instructions.”

“I will take a zero-tolerance stance against any act holding children's right to learn hostage,” she said.

“We will take stern actions including administrative measures,” said Seol Sae-hun, a director general of the education welfare policy bureau at the Ministry of Education.

Amid growing distrust of private kindergartens, the government also decided to increase the number of public kindergartens nationwide, so 40 percent of children can attend these by 2022, up from the current 25.5 percent, and a plan being advanced from the original target of 2023.

The government's moves drew immediate criticism from the Korea Kindergarten Association which said, “It is a shocking measure and we cannot repress our astonishment.”

The association argued the government's action makes their survival impossible.

“The measures will make survival impossible for owners and operators of private kindergartens, who have established the institutes on their private land and contributed to child education for dozens of years,” it said in a statement.