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The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced Sunday it would continue to freeze tuition and entrance fees for the city¡¯s high schools and public kindergartens in 2009. It will also increase financial support for middle and high school students from low-income families by 5.6 percent or W4.6 billion (US$1=W1,501) to W86 billion in 2009, benefiting a total of 103,000 students.
The office explained it had considered the recent economic difficulties when deciding to reject tuition and entrance fees. Currently, such fees for public and private high-schools amount to W362,700 and W14,100 per quarter, respectively, while cyber high-schools cost W67,500 and W5,300 per semester. Quarterly entrance fees for public kindergartens are W5,200 and tuition fees W99,000 for a half-day class and W363,600 for full day.
For university tuition fees costing more than W10 million a year, the Association of Private University Presidents said last Friday it would freeze tuition fees or expand scholarship significantly for the next year. It acknowledged that ceasing fees for all universities would be a challenge, but that the major universities would lead the way.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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