Nuri curriculum to be fully covered by government budget

The central government will fully bear the cost of Nuri curriculum at kindergarten (free education for kids aged three to five) from next year. The political circle has repeated debates about the budget sharing ratio of Nuri curriculum between the central and local governments over the past few years and for this year, the central government shall take 41.2 percent (some 860 billion Korean won or approx. 768 million U.S. dollars) of the budget.

President Moon’s Advisory Committee said that the Ministry of Education reported so on Thursday. Committee spokesperson Park Kwang-on said, “(The Ministry of Education) reported their plan to increase the unit cost to support Nuri curriculum by stages.” About 2 trillion won (approx. 1.8 billion dollars) of central and local governments’ budgets will be put into the budget to run kindergarten Nuri curriculum. If the unit cost per person per month, which is now 220,000 won (approx. 197 dollars) now, increases, the scale of budget will rise as well.

The Advisory Committee will also expand the capacity of national and public kindergartens from the current 25 percent to 40 percent and obligate the admission of preschoolers from low-income families. “The plan is to change private kindergartens to public ones to increase the number of classes by 1,330 and create 2,431 classes at the national and public preschools,” said spokesperson Park.

Hyung-Jun Hwang constant25@donga.com · Hye-Ryung Choi herstory@donga.com