Jeonnam Provincial Office of Education Implements Organizational Restructuring with '3 Bureaus, 3 Officers, 14 Divisions, 61 Teams'

Jeonnam Provincial Office of Education reorganizes its headquarters into a structure of '3 bureaus, 3 officers, 14 divisions, and 61 teams.' Photo by Jeonnam Provincial Office of Education

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Jun-kyung] The Jeonnam Provincial Office of Education will carry out a major ‘organizational restructuring’ on the 1st of next month to support frontline schools for student-centered classroom reform and class innovation, and to strengthen policy functions.

According to the Jeonnam Provincial Office of Education on the 28th, the main office organization will be completely reorganized into a three-bureau system with the establishment of a new Policy Bureau in addition to the existing Education Bureau and Administration Bureau. The newly established Policy Bureau will serve as a control tower function for educational policy planning and coordination, innovative education, labor-management policy, safety, and more.

Under the Policy Bureau, there are the Policy Planning Division, Innovative Education Division, Safety and Welfare Division, and Labor-Management Policy Division. The newly created Safety and Welfare Division will perform safety planning education and act as a control tower function during disasters, while the Labor-Management Policy Division will handle support for educational public officials, negotiations with teacher and public official organizations, and employment support.

‘School Support Centers’ will be established in all 22 city and county education support offices in Jeonnam. This expands the pilot operation conducted last year in 10 education support offices to all cities and counties.

This aims to reduce administrative burdens so that teachers can focus solely on student education and to ensure schools fulfill their fundamental role of ‘student education.’

The School Support Centers will handle complex tasks that are difficult for frontline schools to manage, such as ▲prevention and handling of school violence ▲operation of the School Violence Countermeasure Deliberation Committee ▲hiring of temporary teachers ▲selection of after-school instructors ▲payment of wages for educational public officials, and more.

Through this organizational restructuring, the Office of Education has integrated the curriculum and teacher personnel functions and reorganized them into the Elementary and Secondary Education Divisions. This represents a shift from a function-centered organization to a target-centered organization, advocating student-centered educational policies.

Additionally, a Democratic Citizenship Life Education Division has been newly established to handle democratic citizenship education, human rights, and student life education. To strengthen accountability in facility construction supervision, the Education Facility Supervision Team, which was previously a direct agency, has been incorporated into the main office under the Deputy Superintendent as the Supervision Officer. Accordingly, the main office organization will change to a ‘3 bureaus, 3 directors, 14 divisions, and 61 teams’ system.

Direct agencies have also been adjusted to respond to future educational demands represented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution era and to improve efficiency, reducing the organization from ‘14 agencies and 10 branches’ to ‘12 agencies and 10 branches.’

Superintendent Jang Seok-ung said, “This organizational restructuring is an effort to place students and classrooms at the center of Jeonnam education for the educational innovation promised to the residents. Now that the organizational system is in place, we will vigorously advance classroom and class innovation to nurture children as future talents.”