MEHR Is To Assign Office Assistants For Schools

The Ministry of Education and Human Resources (MEHR) is being criticized since the ministry announced their plan to hire office assistants and to assign public work forces in every elementary, middle, and high school to reduce teachers’ administration assignment, rather than hiring more number of teachers to insure substantiality of the public education. The ministry is pushing forward a plan to hire administrators and managers like assistant principals although they do not have budget for reducing the number of student per class.

The MEHR announced yesterday a `plan to reduce teachers’ assignment`, which stresses their plan to assign assistant principals for even small schools with less than 5 classes, office assistants in every elementary, middle, and high school. Saying that even small schools with less than 5 classes have similar number of official documents to be handled, the ministry decided to assign assistant principals to 948 small schools, and to hire 10,500 office assistants gradually by 1,500 ~ 2000 per year until 2005. To do so, a budget of 10.1 ~ 13.5 billion won is needed every year, and from 2005, after assistants are placed in every school, 70.4 billion won will be consumed. The salary will be expended from each city and province’ special education accounts.

To assist teachers’ administrative assignments, the MEHR decided to assign public work forces with those majored in education or those from teacher’s colleges. The ministry is also reviewing a plan in which they may give additional points for those work forces who are willing to take the teachers selective test.

Although the ministry originally planed to hire 22,000 teachers by 2004, 5,500 per year, they only have increased the number by 2116 due to the budget shortage. Therefore, some are concerned since their plan may bring about a surplus of the administrative resources. The plan is also contrary to the ministry’s policy of merging small schools to solve the teacher shortage problem.

The MEHR had already stated last April that there would be more than 30 percent less amount of administrative assignments since every elementary, middle, and high school in the country are connected through the internet. If the announcement had been true, a teacher’s work assignment should have been reduced by a large margin.

Like the Third Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, U.S., which hired more teachers for its 800 students by cutting off two assistants and one assistant principal out of its six administration staffs, advanced countries are conducting student-first education policy. It is quiet contrary to the MEHR’s policy.

Presenting a statement, the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations (KFTA) said, ``It is doubtful whether the plan to assign office assistants, consuming a large part of the budget, will work. Under current situation, their promise to hire more teachers has not been kept.`` ``What they need is the actual effort, rather than slogans.``

Lee In-Chul inchul@donga.com