Gyeongbuk Office of Education Promotes ‘Gyeongbuk-style Hanultari Kindergarten’ Project for Small Kindergarten Consolidation

'Small Scale Leads to Decline in Education Quality'

Ongoing Initiatives Targeting 6 out of 52 Locations

The Gyeongbuk Office of Education announced on the 16th that it will promote the ‘Gyeongbuk-style Hanultari Kindergarten’ project, which integrates three small kindergartens located in urban areas of cities to provide various educational services.

The Gyeongbuk Office of Education stated, “This is a response measure to the decline in birth rates, which has reduced the number of children attending small kindergartens in urban areas to fewer than 10, making it difficult to guarantee the learning rights of young children and causing the quality of education to deteriorate.”

Gyeongbuk Office of Education.

The ‘Gyeongbuk-style Hanultari Kindergarten’ integrates about three small attached kindergartens in urban areas into a central kindergarten with three or more classes, providing customized education according to the increased number of children, such as age-specific class organization, operation of school buses during vacations, and all-day care services.

Small attached kindergartens have faced difficulties such as the small scale hindering social development through peer groups of the same age, lack of diverse educational activities and programs, insufficient space for these activities, and excessive workload for teachers.

To improve and supplement these issues, the Gyeongbuk Office of Education plans to select ‘Gyeongbuk-style Hanultari Kindergartens’ and open classes by age groups of 3, 4, and 5 years old regardless of the number of children, and assign vice principals and designated teachers to enhance the professionalism of kindergarten curriculum management.

In particular, additional personnel such as after-school program specialists, kindergarten administrative staff, and administrative office personnel will be assigned to reduce the workload of members, and educational environment facility improvement funds and after-school activity operation funds will be provided to support various educational activities and programs, offering educational services equivalent to those of standalone kindergartens.

As of March this year, there are 296 one-class attached kindergartens in the Gyeongbuk area. Among them, 244 attached kindergartens in eup and myeon areas are excluded to guarantee the minimum learning rights of children, and consolidation will be promoted targeting 52 attached kindergartens in city areas.

The central kindergartens to be promoted from 2024 will be selected considering factors such as the distance and commuting conditions between attached kindergartens within the integrated area, urban redevelopment, changes in the population of residential clusters affecting the number of prospective children, and school facility conditions. After collecting parents’ opinions, the plan will be finalized around October.

An official from the Gyeongbuk Office of Education explained, “Among the 52 attached kindergartens in urban areas, we are currently working on consolidating six into two. After collecting and obtaining consent from parents, the consolidation targets will be finalized around October, and pilot operation will begin next year. After Chungnam Province succeeded in consolidating small kindergartens, many cities and provinces nationwide are currently benchmarking this model.”

Lim Jong-sik, Superintendent of Gyeongbuk Education, said, “We will support the increasing number of small kindergartens due to low birth rates with various policies and strive for the successful establishment and substantial operation of the ‘Gyeongbuk-style Hanultari Kindergarten’ pilot project through collecting opinions from parents, principals, and teachers.”

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