368 primary, secondary schools in Seoul to start at 9 a.m. from March
368 primary, secondary schools in Seoul to start at 9 a.m. from March
Posted January. 30, 2015 07:12,
Following the suit of Gyeonggi Province and Gwangju Metropolitan City, some schools in Seoul will start at 9 a.m. Children from low-income brackets will have the priority to enter public kindergartens.
The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced the 2015 major work plans on Thursday, which included the aforementioned plans. Out of the entire 1,301 elementary, middle and high schools in Seoul, 28.2 percent of schools will start at 9:00 a.m. from this March. The detailed breakdown is 353 elementary schools (58.9 percent of the total), 14 middle schools (3.64 percent) and 1 high school (0.3 percent).
The education office decided to increase the number of public kindergartens, which was around 653 classes last year, to 714 classes this year to resolve shortage of public preschools. The education office plans to build nine new kindergartens utilizing lands and buildings of elementary schools, which are to be merged or closed. The office also decided to give the priority to children from the secondary bracket of the lower income groups designated by the Korean law.
The entrance process for autonomous private high schools will be changed from the current "drawing lots plus interview" to "drawing lots only" system, which is expected to provoke strong opposition. Seoul Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon has pursued abolition of the autonomous private high school system since his inauguration in July 2014, citing, Due to the autonomous private high school system, academic atmosphere has deteriorated in general high schools. However, his attempt fell through faced with strong opposition from the education ministry and autonomous high schools. The liberal superintendent has taken one step backward from abolition to revision of the entrance process, but autonomous private high schools are still in opposition against the plan.
In addition, the education office plans to increase the number of innovation schools from current 68 to 100 in 2015, and to 130 in 2016.
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