Gwangju Education Civic Group Urges Education Office to Strengthen Selection Criteria for Purchased Kindergartens

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Cho Hyung-joo] An educational civic group in Gwangju has urged the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education to strengthen the selection criteria for purchased-type kindergartens.

The Citizens' Group for a Society Without Academic Elitism released a press statement on the 10th, saying, "Our country has a low ratio of national and public kindergartens, making it difficult to guarantee the public nature of early childhood education. To improve this situation, a policy is being promoted in which the education office purchases private kindergartens."

They added, "While purchasing existing private kindergartens and converting them to public ones naturally increases the enrollment rate of national and public kindergartens, there has been no reduction in class size or improvement in the educational environment. This is a desk-bound administration that merely relocates private kindergarten students and raises the ratio of national and public kindergartens to give the appearance of enhanced educational publicness."

They also criticized, "Kindergartens A and B, selected as purchased-type kindergartens by the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education this year, are located within 1.3 km of each other, and there is already an attached kindergarten in the area, so it is expected that student recruitment will be significantly affected in the future."

In particular, they said, "The purchased-type kindergarten system is in a situation where it can be exploited as an opportunity to give special favors to private kindergartens, and the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education has relaxed the exclusion criteria for selecting purchased-type kindergartens. This actually played a decisive role in selecting the problematic kindergartens as purchase targets."

Furthermore, regarding Kindergarten A, it was explained that following an audit by the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education, improper receipt of teacher welfare improvement funds and class operation subsidies, inappropriate budget execution and facility construction contract work, and private misuse of kindergarten accounts were detected, resulting in a warning to the institution and administrative measures including the recovery of 48,954,000 KRW.

Kindergarten B’s representative and director, Mr. C, who was an executive of the Korea Kindergarten Association during the last Gwangju Superintendent of Education election, was fined for violating the Anti-Graft Act by providing money and gifts eight times over a year to the spouse of Superintendent Jang Hui-guk.

In response, the civic group urged, "Efforts should be made to ensure that the purchased-type kindergarten policy becomes an opportunity to strengthen the public nature of early childhood education, to reinforce the selection criteria for purchased-type kindergartens, and to enhance public kindergarten facilities for socially disadvantaged groups."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.