Next year, the Ministry of Education's budget will exceed 100 trillion won, setting a record high. Although the opposition led a reduction in the budget, they secured 268 billion won for free education for five-year-olds by allocating government reserve funds.
According to the Ministry of Education, the budget for next year, which passed the National Assembly plenary session on the afternoon of the 10th, totals 104.8684 trillion won. This is an increase of 9.0684 trillion won (9.5%) from this year's 95.8 trillion won. It is the second time in history, following 2023 (101.9979 trillion won), to surpass 100 trillion won, and it marks the largest budget ever.
The Democratic Party of Korea and other opposition parties processed the government budget for next year by reflecting only the budget plan with a 4.1 trillion won cut. However, the Ministry of Education's budget was reflected almost exactly as it was in the government's original plan. Only 8.3 billion won was cut from the 104.8767 trillion won submitted by the Ministry of Education to the National Assembly. This 8.3 billion won was reduced from the budget for work-study scholarships within the National Scholarship fund.
However, the total budget for national scholarships increased by 584.6 billion won, from 4.7205 trillion won this year to 5.3051 trillion won. The support targets for national scholarships will be expanded from the current eight income brackets to nine income brackets. The ninth income bracket is equivalent to 300% of the median income, corresponding to a family with a monthly average income of 6.45 million won. With 500,000 additional students in the ninth bracket, a total of 1.5 million students will receive national scholarships next year, accounting for 75% of the 2 million total university students.
Additionally, 487.7 billion won will be allocated next year to improve educational conditions following the increase in medical school students. This includes 143.2 billion won for expanding facilities at national university medical schools and 76 billion won for enhancing laboratory equipment, totaling 150.8 billion won. Furthermore, 172.8 billion won will be allocated for low-interest loans (1.5%) to private universities.
To improve the quality of medical education, including innovation in the curriculum of national and private medical schools, 52.2 billion won will be provided. As part of the plan to hire 1,000 national university medical school professors by 2027, 26 billion won is included to recruit 330 next year. An 82.9 billion won budget is set for establishing clinical training centers for the practice of national university medical students and residents.
With the initiative to integrate early childhood education and care in kindergartens and daycare centers, the 5.4 trillion won childcare budget from the Ministry of Health and Welfare has been transferred to the Ministry of Education.
The budget for the ‘Regionally Innovative Supporting Education System’ (RISE), to support co-growth of regions and universities, is 2 trillion won. This is an increase of 800 billion won compared to this year's 1.2 trillion won.
RISE is part of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s local revitalization policy, which involves transferring the authority for university administrative and financial support to local governments. Eight projects, including the local university revitalization project and the LINC 3.0 project for fostering industry-academia cooperation leading universities, will be integrated into RISE.
While the opposition party independently processed next year's budget by reflecting only the budget cuts from the proposal submitted by the government, the next year's Ministry of Education budget did not include the government's share of high school free education expenses and the budget for five-year-olds' free education.
However, the Democratic Party of Korea, when submitting the revised budget bill to the plenary session that day, specified in the budget guidelines that expenses for free high school education may be used if the Local Educational Grant Act (grant-in-aid) is amended. Consequently, the expenses for five-year-olds' free education in the amount of 268.9 billion won have also been approved for use from government reserve funds. Essentially, next year's budget for five-year-olds' free education has been secured. Additionally, the budget for high school free education will be supplemented with government reserve funds once the Local Educational Grant Act passes.