The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education today (10th) entered the process of canceling the designation of specialized middle schools among Daewon and Younghoon International Middle Schools in the same context as the educational authorities decided to abolish autonomous private high schools (foreign accidents), foreign language high schools and international high schools.

It was established for the founding ideology of fostering global talent, but it was decided that it has been transformed into an entrance-oriented educational institution to promote private education and promote school ranking.

International Middle School is a specialized middle school designated by the educational authorities.

The Enforcement Decree of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act allows the superintendent to cancel the designation of specialized middle schools with the consent of the Minister of Education if it is deemed impossible to achieve the designated purpose by evaluating the performance of school operations every 5 years.

Kukje Middle School was originally established with the goal of educating students to return to their home school after completing a long foreign life, and absorbing the need for early study abroad.

In Seoul, Daewon Middle School and Young Hoon Middle School were converted from general to international in 2009.

However, according to data released by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education in 2017, the proportion of international students from overseas was 1.4%.

Following the entrance exams that broke out in June 2013, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education abolished some of the evaluations of the international document screening area in the 2014 admissions process, and selected students by lottery starting in 2015.

However, the criticism that the international middle school is getting expensive tuition and encouraging private tutoring has not died out.

Yeonghoon International Middle School and Daewon International Middle School were criticized for being'noble schools' because the tuition per student was more than 10 million won.

Criticism of creating social discomfort has always caught up with sending to the middle school, a compulsory curriculum, which is equivalent to tuition fees.

Kang Yeon-heung, director of education policy at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, said, "I expected to play a leading role in educating students to survive in a global environment, such as interacting with overseas students. "It was very vulnerable to achieving our educational goals."

In this way, the international middle school in Seoul left the controversy over whether it has been operating for the purpose of its establishment for over 10 years, and eventually went through the process of switching to the general middle school.

In particular, as the Ministry of Education decided to abolish external and self-accidents from 2025 to make it a general high school and revised the enforcement ordinance of the related laws, it was dominated by the evaluation that it would be difficult for the international school district in Seoul to avoid the swords pulled by the DOE.

This is because the controversy over the promotion of private education and education inequality will continue in the compulsory education stage if the international middle school remains in an abolished situation.

However, in this regard, Superintendent Cho emphasized, "This international performance evaluation is not a part of the international abolition policy, as some fears are." "It was a fair and objective evaluation of the past five years of operational performance."

While two international middle schools in Seoul are actually undergoing abolition procedures, they are also interested in evaluating redesignation among other international middlemen.

There are five international middle schools in the country.

Among them, except for Gyeongin Nam's Sunin International Middle School, which opened in 2018, Gyeonggi Province's Cheongshim International Middle School and Busan's Busan International Middle School are subject to redesignation this year.

However, in case of Busan International Middle School, unlike other 4 places, it is also a public middle school designated by the state, and it is also analyzed whether it is easy to get a good score in some evaluation items such as deductions based on the results of the audit.

"Gyeonggi and Busan have already completed the evaluation and know that they are about to make an announcement," said Kang. "(Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education's decision) will not have a separate effect."

In the school district, it was expected that the popularity of famous middle schools in so-called'prestigious school districts', such as Gangnam, will rise due to the transition to the international middle school.

Seong-ho Lim, CEO of Jongro Academy's Sky Education, said, "Students who wished to enter international schools will turn to the general public located in prestigious school districts." Analyzed.

“Daewon and Yeonghoon International Middle School are competitively high, ranging from 10 to 1 to 20 to 1 even though they are lottery selection.” Since the parents of these students are mostly opinion leaders, there is a possibility of the appearance of general prestigious middle schools preferred by these parents in the future. "There are."