Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Provides 100 Million KRW for Small-Scale Facility Costs to Private Middle and High Schools

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo Byung-don] The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education is launching a project this year to provide 100 million KRW each as "small-scale facility funds" to private middle and high schools in Seoul.

On the 15th, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced that starting this year, it will carry out the "Dajeongdagam" (Decide Together and Empathize Together) project, which supports small-scale facility budgets for 298 financially deficient private middle and high schools in Seoul.

The support targets are "financially deficient schools," excluding autonomous private high schools (jasago), specialized high schools (teukmokgo), and arts high schools. To maximize budget execution autonomy, the plan is to include this budget within the schools' basic operating expenses.

The small-scale facility funds are used for minor repairs such as leak repairs caused by flood damage and remodeling of aging special activity classrooms, carried out on a small scale at each school. While the small-scale facility funds secured by each school range from 20 million to 40 million KRW, many schools face difficulties in securing finances due to rising raw material prices.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education plans to secure additional budgets through this year's supplementary budget to expand support to public schools in Seoul (1,269 schools). The 29.8 billion KRW budget for private schools passed the Seoul City Council review in December last year, but the 100.6 billion KRW budget for public schools still requires additional funding.