Busan Office of Education Develops Innovative 'Middle School Admission Assignment Program'

One-Stop Processing for Application Creation, Lottery, and Assignment Result Notification/Inquiry in NEIS

Workflow diagram of the NEIS-based middle school admission assignment program developed by Busan Metropolitan Office of Education.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] The Busan Metropolitan Office of Education announced on the 4th that it has completed the development of a new middle school admission assignment program based on the education administration information system (NEIS) and will fully operate it starting next year.

This program processes the entire middle school admission assignment process?from application creation, lottery, assignment result notification, to inquiry?on the NEIS system as a one-stop service, which is expected to significantly reduce teachers' workload and enhance convenience for parents.

The program was developed through a joint effort of a TF team composed of education office staff, teachers, and IT personnel, along with the Education Administration Research Team, with a budget of 192.75 million KRW from October 2018 to May 2020.

The Education Administration Research Team conducted an optimal review and improvement process of the overall middle school admission assignment tasks, newly establishing a dedicated middle school admission assignment page, consolidating and simplifying forms, expanding preferred assignment support (from 3 schools to 4 schools), disclosing the number of transferable students, extending the application period, creating an FAQ section, and developing 15 new features in total.

Additionally, a survey was conducted targeting all users to analyze the current state of assignment tasks, perform a comprehensive survey of assignment tasks and programs in other cities and provinces, and analyze similar software development cases, thereby enhancing user convenience through systematic preliminary research.

The city education office plans to pilot the program in June and further improve and incorporate features such as SMS notification of assignment results, automatic generation of various statistics, error verification functions, reassignment lottery functions, and expanded parent participation in the lottery.

User training will be conducted in September, and the program is scheduled to be fully operational for the 2021 middle school admission assignment tasks starting in November.

Until now, middle school admission assignments were managed separately through the assignment program and the NEIS system, causing a heavy workload for teachers due to manual processes. There were also several issues such as vulnerabilities in personal information protection, potential for various errors, and delivery of assignment result notifications by hand.

Kim Young-bok, Superintendent of Haeundae Education Support Office, who led the program development, said, “Once the program is fully operational, it will greatly reduce teachers' workload, resolve inconveniences for parents, and enhance the fairness, convenience, and reliability of the middle school admission assignment process.”