Gyeongbuk Office of Education Focuses Administrative Efforts on Complete Education Recovery... Full Commitment to Addressing Learning Gaps and Restoring Mental Health

Superintendent Lim Jong-sik of Gyeongbuk Office of Education declares his commitment to focusing administrative capabilities for complete educational recovery.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Dongguk Lee] Lim Jong-sik, Superintendent of Gyeongbuk Office of Education, announced the four major blueprints with the launch of the second term of Gyeongbuk education, presenting ‘complete educational recovery’ as the top priority task of his term for schools and students struggling due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.

This reaffirms the Office of Education’s commitment to concentrate all administrative power on quickly normalizing education and daily life disrupted by COVID-19 through the uninterrupted implementation of the ‘Warm Educational Recovery’ policy announced last February, so that students’ learning and growth can continue fully.

The Gyeongbuk Office of Education is steadily carrying out a total of 86 tasks in three areas?▲ recovery of educational deficits ▲ customized support for vulnerable groups ▲ improvement of educational conditions?under the vision of ‘Complete Educational Recovery for All of Us, and a Great Transformation to Future Education for All of Us’ to overcome educational losses caused by COVID-19 and leap forward to future education.

To this end, a total budget of 365.6 billion KRW has been invested for focused support by task, and an additional 343.8 billion KRW was secured through the first supplementary budget to be intensively allocated to resolving students’ learning deficits and restoring mental health.

To address learning deficits, the customized supplementary curriculum program ‘Our Class Hope Ladder Classroom,’ which considers students’ levels and aspirations, has been operated in 589 elementary, middle, and high schools, covering a total of 6,867 classes, with an additional 11.2 billion KRW planned for investment in the second half of the year.

Elementary On School, Subscriber Count Surpasses 10,000.

The ‘On School’ program, which won the grand prize at the 2021 Government Innovation Best Practice Competition in the education sector, is also operating as a real-time interactive class every day at 7 p.m. with enthusiastic responses from schools. It supports student growth and helps close learning gaps through open learning without time and space constraints, with 9,770 channel subscribers and a cumulative view count of 966,320.

The Gyeongbuk Office of Education is also accelerating the operation of psychological, emotional, and social recovery programs alongside resolving learning deficits.

To promote recovery of physical and mental health through customized support, the ‘Psychological and Emotional Stability Support Program with Flora and Fauna’ is being operated in 238 elementary, middle, high, and special schools.

Psychological and Emotional Stability Support Program with Plants and Animals.

The ‘All of Us Together’ program, a class-level customized character education program through peer activities, play activities, and teacher-student companionship activities, is being operated in 1,619 classes across elementary, middle, high, and special schools. Additionally, 1,683 classes in elementary, middle, and high schools have been selected and operated as ‘Happiness Education Practice Classes’ to foster positive perceptions through experiences of happiness.

The reason such swift and focused support was possible is partly due to policy research results that analyzed the actual conditions of educational deficits among elementary, middle, and high school students in Gyeongbuk and proposed support measures by the Office of Education for complete recovery.

A research team composed of field teachers conducted a survey targeting 22,333 students from 4th grade elementary to 3rd grade high school in the province, and compared the results with research data conducted by the Korea Youth Policy Institute in 2019. This objectively confirmed that students in the province experienced deficits in learning, psychological/emotional, and social aspects compared to before COVID-19, and proposed corresponding policy measures.

Following the researchers’ suggestions, the educational recovery programs previously led by the Office of Education will be converted from the second half of the year to customized educational recovery programs autonomously implemented by individual schools, considering their conditions and situations. To this end, a budget of 5 billion KRW will be secured and supported for school-level educational recovery program operation.

Superintendent Lim Jong-sik said, “Since students’ educational deficits have been objectively confirmed, we will speedily implement educational programs that can make up for them,” adding, “We will focus all the capabilities of the provincial Office of Education so that students can concentrate on their studies, not only addressing psychological and emotional issues but also restoring social skills that need to be developed as they grow.”

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