Pyeongtaek City Allocates 29 Billion Won to Education Sector This Year

Pyeongtaek City (Mayor Kim Seon-gi) announced that it has allocated a budget of 29 billion won this year for education support projects to cultivate talented individuals who will lead Pyeongtaek as it leaps forward in development.

The city plans to allocate and support a total of 29 billion won, including 12.9 billion won for eco-friendly free meal programs, 9.1 billion won for education environment improvement projects, 1.5 billion won for regular high school development support projects, and 5.5 billion won for special regional development support projects in the education sector, to create a pleasant and enjoyable educational environment.

Last year, Pyeongtaek City implemented eco-friendly free meal programs for all grades of kindergarten five-year-olds, elementary school, and middle school. This year, the city plans to expand the free meal program to include three- and four-year-olds attending kindergartens and daycare centers.

As a result of this expanded support, 8,446 young children attending kindergartens and daycare centers will benefit from free meal programs, and the city plans to allocate an additional 1.8 billion won for this purpose. Accordingly, a total of 41,182 children ages 3-5, elementary school, and middle school students in Pyeongtaek City will benefit from the free meal program.

The city plans to invest 9.1 billion won to provide a pleasant and safe school life, comfortable educational environment, and diverse educational programs, including modernization of cafeterias, bathroom improvements, installation of heating and cooling systems, as well as native English-speaking assistant teachers, after-school programs, and school library operations.

With these initiatives, the learning environment for students will be further improved, and citizens will be able to experience improved educational environments where communities and schools can work together, enabling students to have better school programs and conditions to study in libraries.

Meanwhile, the budget for the regular high school development project, which Pyeongtaek City implemented for the first time nationwide last year and which produced positive results, has been allocated at 1.5 billion won, an increase of 500 million won or more compared to last year. As a result, regular high schools in Pyeongtaek City will develop educational systems comparable to specialized and specialized high schools in terms of improving student academic achievement.

As a result of Pyeongtaek City's activation support projects last year, student academic achievement and educational satisfaction improved. In particular, the high school that showed the highest academic achievement improvement saw the proportion of students in grades 1-3 increase from 10% to 42% for first-year students and from 38% to 80% for second-year students, showing significant improvement. Other regular high schools also showed academic achievement improvements through various learning-related programs.

A Pyeongtaek City official stated, "We will continue to implement ongoing support projects so that talented individuals can fully develop their dreams and capabilities in Pyeongtaek City," and added, "We will do our best to develop progressive programs with the understanding that education sector support is one of the important initiatives that will brighten Pyeongtaek City's future."