Gyeonggi Province Office of Education Introduces 'School Choice Program' - First in Nation

The Gyeonggi Province Office of Education is eliminating public recruitment projects and implementing a 'School Choice Program' to enable schools to conduct educational projects tailored to their specific circumstances.

According to the Gyeonggi Province Office of Education on the 13th, the school choice program converts existing major projects from a public recruitment format to an autonomous selection system for individual schools, marking the first such implementation nationwide.

With the implementation of this program, public recruitment projects previously operated with funding from the Gyeonggi Office of Education budget—worth less than 10 million won per school—will be eliminated.

The school choice program operates by having school members deliberate and autonomously select approximately 3 programs from among 23 projects that have passed the Gyeonggi Office of Education's strict evaluation criteria.

The program fields include ▲professional learning communities ▲career programs ▲parenting education with families ▲science education promotion ▲prevention of gaming, internet, smoking, and alcohol addiction ▲teacher healing programs ▲cultural arts and reading discussion education ▲basic academic achievement improvement ▲peace sensitivity ▲restorative life education ▲kimchi-making experience education and 23 other programs.

The Gyeonggi Office of Education will provide funding of 6 to 12 million won per school for each of the 2,231 schools in the province, depending on school size and characteristics.

With the improvement in project methods, schools have reduced unnecessary paperwork and administrative burdens related to public recruitment projects, and allocated budget can now be settled as part of the school's basic operating expenses without separate reporting to the education office.

The Gyeonggi Office of Education also provides project examples for each program and grants schools autonomy to set project scope according to their circumstances, while leaving project evaluation to school discretion.

An official from the Gyeonggi Office of Education stated, "We will create good policies that schools can choose from and educational administration will also evolve in the direction of supporting individual school educational activities."