Going forward, rewards for reporting unregistered or unfiled teaching activities by private academies, excessive collection of tuition, and violations of teaching hours will be raised by up to 10 times.
The Ministry of Education said on the 16th it will promulgate a revision to the Enforcement Rules of the Act on the Establishment and Operation of Private Teaching Institutes and Extracurricular Lessons (Hagwon Act).
Under the revision, rewards for reporting cases in which academies or tutoring centers conduct teaching without registering or filing with the superintendent of education will rise from the current 200,000 won to up to 2 million won. Rewards for reporting cases of collecting more than the registered or filed tuition, or violating the teaching hours set by the superintendent of education, will also be raised from the current 100,000 won to up to 1 million won.
The revision takes effect upon promulgation, and the increased rewards apply to reports filed on or after the effective date.
The Ministry of Education said this revision is a follow-up measure to the plan to strengthen management of academy tuition released at the second meeting of the government's Task Force on Special Management of Cost of Living on Feb. 26.
The Ministry of Education also revamped the "Illegal Private Education Report Center." It integrated the reporting channel, which had been operated as a separate website, into the Ministry of Education website. It introduced the government's unified login method to allow login with simple authentication such as Naver and Kakao. Starting this month, the procedure was improved so applicants can apply for rewards at the same time as filing a report.
The Ministry of Education, together with municipal and provincial education offices, has been conducting special inspections of academy tuition since Jan. As of the end of Jun., inspections of 55,280 academies and tutoring centers nationwide uncovered a total of 5,021 legal violations. Subsequently, a total of 6,691 administrative measures were imposed, including suspension of instruction and requests for indictment and investigation.
Choi Eun-ok, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education, said, "This revision is an unavoidable measure intended to activate the private sector's monitoring function and effectively curb illegal acts by some academies."