This Year, Recruitment Numbers for Kindergarten, Elementary, and Special Education Teachers All Plummet... Special Education Teacher Recruitment Drops by 60%

Increased Compared to Preliminary Announcement but All Show Clear Decrease from Last Year
422 Kindergarten, 3561 Elementary, 349 Special Education Students Recruited
157 Kindergarten, 197 Elementary, 545 Special Education Students Decreased from Last Year

A banner related to Family Month is hung at a school in Seoul on the 13th, two days before Teacher's Day, which is the first to be celebrated in earnest since the full resumption of face-to-face classes at schools. Photo by Moon Honam munonam@

The number of recruitment for kindergarten, elementary, and special education teachers has sharply decreased compared to last year. In particular, the number of special education teachers has dropped by more than 60% compared to last year.

According to the 2023 academic year public kindergarten, elementary, and special education teacher recruitment announcements released by the 17 metropolitan and provincial offices of education on the 14th, the number of kindergarten teacher recruits is 422, elementary teachers 3,561, and special education teachers 349. These figures show a slight increase compared to the preliminary announcement, which listed 386 kindergarten teachers and 3,518 elementary teachers.

Compared to last year's recruitment announcement, there is a clear downward trend. The number of kindergarten teachers decreased by 157, elementary teachers by 197, and special education teachers by 545 compared to the previous year. Compared to the 2021 academic year, when the number of kindergarten teacher recruits was in the 1,200 range, it is about one-quarter of that.

In particular, in Seoul, the number of elementary teacher recruits was only 115, about half of last year's 216. The number of kindergarten teacher recruits in Seoul was only 10, down 32 from last year. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education explained, "In the case of elementary teachers, the number of new appointment candidates has decreased, and as a result of continuously requesting the Ministry of Education to expand the number of teacher recruits in preparation for future education, a small increase in recruits was made."

In Gyeonggi, where the school-age population is large, the number of kindergarten teacher recruits decreased to 47, less than half of last year's 108. The number of elementary teachers recruited in Gyeonggi slightly increased from 1,493 to 1,531.

By region, the areas with the fewest elementary teacher recruits are Gwangju and Daejeon. The number of elementary teacher recruits in Gwangju remained the same as last year at 6, while Daejeon decreased by 2 to 10. For kindergarten teachers, Daegu and Gwangju each have 3 recruits, and Daejeon has 2.

As the school-age population continues to decline, the Ministry of Education is maintaining its policy of reducing the number of teachers. Considering future population projections from Statistics Korea, the Ministry has prepared a mid- to long-term teacher supply and demand plan, estimating the number of elementary students in 2030 to be 1.72 million. The Ministry has set the recruitment scale for elementary teachers for the 2023?2024 academic years at around 3,000 and for secondary teachers at 4,000.

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