Gyeonggi-do to Support 23.5 Billion KRW for Three Major Education Projects Including Gymnasium Construction This Year

Gyeonggi Provincial Government Gwanggyo New Office Building

Gyeonggi Province aims to provide 'more equal opportunities' by investing 97.3 billion KRW (23.5 billion KRW from the provincial budget) this year in collaboration with the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education to carry out three major education support projects, including support for the construction of school indoor gymnasiums.

On the 8th, Gyeonggi Province announced that it will implement various support projects this year targeting 1,829 elementary, middle, high, and special schools in the province, including providing uniforms for new middle and high school students, supplying experiential disaster safety equipment, and constructing school indoor gymnasiums.

First, the province will provide approximately 300,000 KRW per student to purchase uniforms or group uniforms for 1,246 schools and 272,180 new middle and high school students enrolling this year.

Since starting support for new middle school students in 2019, the province has continuously expanded the scope of support to include new high school students and group uniforms for schools where uniforms are not worn.

The experiential disaster safety equipment support project aims to create safer schools by providing 5 million KRW per school to purchase experiential disaster safety equipment for elementary, middle, high, and special schools. Since its inception in 2014, it has supported 2,024 schools over nine years until 2022. This project is part of the disaster safety response support initiatives aligned with the Ministry of Education’s seven standard safety education programs. Support for 500 schools this year will mark the conclusion of the project.

The school indoor gymnasium construction support project has been implemented in three phases targeting schools without indoor gymnasiums as of 2018. The annual support status shows that approximately 1 trillion KRW (21.51 billion KRW from the provincial budget) was invested over three years: 136 schools with 340 billion KRW in 2018, 149 schools with 420 billion KRW in 2020, and 83 schools with 220 billion KRW from 2022 to 2023.

The province holds monthly practical meetings with the Office of Education to discuss smooth project implementation directions. Additionally, it establishes the previous year’s project evaluation and next year’s implementation plan annually through the Education Support Deliberation Committee.

Park Sang-eung, Director of Education Cooperation at the province, stated, "Along with universal educational welfare provided to all students, we will not lose focus on educational blind spots. To move closer to an opportunity-filled Gyeonggi Province under the 8th civilian administration, we will do our best with the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education to discover educationally vulnerable areas."