Gyeonggi Province Faces Critical Shortage of Education Specialists

The Gyeonggi Province Office of Education reports that while the province has the highest number of schools and students nationwide, with educational demand growing significantly each year, it faces a severe shortage of education specialists responsible for curriculum guidance and research in schools. The office is requesting the Ministry of Education, Human Resources and Development and the Ministry of Interior and Safety to increase the number of education specialists to address major administrative challenges.

According to the Provincial Office of Education on the 3rd, the province currently has 25 city and county offices of education, 3,760 schools at all levels (19.4% of the national total), and 84,924 teachers (20.3% of the national total). However, the number of education specialists working in the province stands at only 483 (12.3% of the national total).

As a result, each education specialist in the province oversees 8 schools and 175 teachers—significantly higher than the 4 schools and 53 teachers overseen by each specialist in the Gangwon Province Office of Education, and well above the national average of 5 schools and 107 teachers per specialist.

The Provincial Office of Education noted that despite the shortage of education specialists, the number of students, schools, and teachers in the province continues to increase annually, placing ever-greater workload burdens on existing specialist staff.

In particular, the office argues that the shortage of specialists creates considerable difficulties in implementing new national policy projects, including teacher evaluation, after-school programs, school violence prevention and countermeasures, and English education innovation.

Accordingly, the Provincial Office of Education recently requested the central government to increase the education specialist quota to bring the province's proportion from the current 12.3% of the national total to 20.3%—matching the province's share of national teachers. This includes an immediate increase of 104 positions this year (19 supervisors and 85 specialists), followed by a total addition of 312 positions in the future.