The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has drawn up a 1.17 trillion won supplementary budget to upgrade aging school facilities and expand free early childhood education, among other priorities. The image depicts a restroom renovation at an aging school. [Generated with ChatGPT]
The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has drawn up a 1.17 trillion won supplementary budget to upgrade aging school facilities and expand free early childhood education, among other priorities. The image depicts a restroom renovation at an aging school. [Generated with ChatGPT]

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has drawn up a supplementary budget of 1.17 trillion won ($825 million) to upgrade aging school facilities and expand free early childhood education.

The office submitted the "2026 Second Supplementary Budget" to the Seoul Metropolitan Council on Monday, saying it was designed to bring the "Seoul Education Vision: Basic Education for All" — announced in July — into second-semester classrooms while strengthening student safety and educational welfare.

The largest share of the budget goes toward improving aging school facilities, with a total of 625.4 billion won allocated for the school environment. The centerpiece is 214.2 billion won earmarked for the full renovation of restrooms at 230 schools across Seoul.

"Students have been avoiding school restrooms because of outdated fixtures, poor lighting and inadequate ventilation," an education office official said, adding that parents had repeatedly called for improvements.

Another 329 billion won has been set aside to upgrade heating and cooling systems, windows and electrical infrastructure. The budget also covers seismic reinforcement of earthquake-vulnerable buildings and the replacement of exterior dry-vit cladding that poses a fire-spread risk.

Modernizing cafeterias and cooking equipment will receive 56 billion won, and expanded tableware rental and washing support is intended to ease the workload of kitchen staff. The office will also provide 20.8 billion won so schools can quickly repair small hazardous facilities on their own, and has set aside 4.5 billion won to prepare for the mandatory installation of closed-circuit television cameras at school entrances, corridors and stairwells.

Free education support will be extended to younger children. The office allocated 11.1 billion won to cover tuition for 35,000 three-year-olds enrolled in public and private kindergartens and daycare centers — broadening eligibility to include three-year-olds who had previously been excluded from the government's phased rollout of free early education.

Field trips, reading programs and digital education will receive a combined 33.6 billion won. School operating funds for reading programs account for 13.7 billion won, while 2.2 billion won has been set aside for field trips to cover safety personnel, advance site visits and bus rental. An additional 17.3 billion won will go toward equipping sixth-grade elementary and 12th-grade high school classrooms with digital whiteboards, with the aim of expanding AI- and digitally-based learning environments.

The budget also includes 1.2 billion won to fund short-term substitute instructors at private kindergartens to cover gaps caused by sick leave and annual leave; 500 million won for parental-leave allowances; 400 million won for student mental health recovery; 700 million won for multicultural education; and 1.4 billion won for alternative education support.

"There are children who are reluctant to even use the restroom at school," Seoul Superintendent of Education Jeong Geun-sik said. "This supplementary budget was put together with resolving students' everyday inconveniences as the top priority, while also preparing for an AI-driven future in education."


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