By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
From 2014, no new high schools will be established in Seoul due to an expected decrease in the city's number of students. Education authorities made a similar move to freeze the opening of new high schools in 2001 but since 2002, an average of three schools per year have been opened.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, Sunday, a total of 10 high schools will be newly built from this year through 2013. After that, students will have to travel to other districts if there are no high schools in their residential area.
"We have concluded that demand for high schools will plateau, considering the decreasing number of students due to the low birth rate," said an official.
Instead, the education office plans to move students to schools in other districts or relocate high schools to districts where the demand for high schools is greater.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is also considering introducing a law to make it easier to relocate schools in major cities or integrated them with others.
Currently, Seoul has 359,000 high school students and the number is expected to decrease by some 41,000 down to 318,000 by 2014.
As for middle school seniors, their number stands at about 119,000, but is likely to reduce to around 103,000 in four years. Hence, the number of high school students per class will be lowered to 31 from the current 35 in 2014.
In the meantime, the education office will assign middle school seniors to high schools according to a new system that allows them to apply for their preferred schools.
Under the system, students are able to apply to a maximum of four high schools ㅡ two from outside and two within their residence districts. High schools admit 20 percent of their admission quotas from the entire pool of applicants and accept another 40 percent from students in the district they belongs to.
The schools enroll the remaining 40 percent from among students who fail to be admitted to any of the schools they apply to. The education office will assign schools to these students through a lottery and will announce the results next Friday.
With the introduction of the system and the decreasing number of students, high schools have to compete in order to attract students.