Special educational grants perform the financial peace function of local educational finance grants with complementary finances that give them flexibility to respond to demand that ordinary grants do not capture.
As of 2019, the grant amount is more than 1 trillion won, which is also large, and it is important because the Minister of Education has some discretion in execution.
The Ministry of Education has been criticized for its lack of transparency and fairness due to its arbitrary decision without clear enforcement standards, while state-run projects through special grants have served as a representative means of controlling the site, and have disrupted the planned operation of local education finances.
Therefore, this study analyzed the actual conditions of the operation of the national initiative project, which is operated in a top-down manner among special educational grants, and derived the improvement plan of the system.
The main research methods included content analysis and FGI, and the FGI group was divided into three groups: provincial education office, education support office, and front-line school.
In the areas of questioning, the necessity of the national policy project system, the operation of the budget, evaluation, and reflux were three types of questions, and the results were as follows.
First, the need for national policy projects should be improved in terms of concentrated investment and policy objectives at the national level, pilot operation for educational policy settlement, stable budget and financial security, rigidity of the system and excessive purpose of the budget.
Second, as for the current state of budget operation of state-run projects, it is difficult to push ahead with the budget because of different business divisions, lack of flexibility due to strong purpose and rigidity, and the opinion that the project is not distributed in a timely manner. In addition, there were opinions that autonomy was not guaranteed due to the fact that the project was not suitable for the local situation, and there were problems such as administrative processing, such as documents and settlements after budget execution, due to the large number of budget players.
Finally, the problem of actual beneficiaries' assessments was considered when it came to assessment and reflux, problems where project assessment was not reflected in next year's plan, problems of effectiveness in determining the effectiveness of the project, problems of sustainability and lack of feedback on project results.
The improvement measures included establishing a bottom-up strategy, linking the curriculum with special grants, expanding the demand for local education issues and establishing a cooperative system among local budget players, simplifying administrative processing, and strengthening substantial evaluation indicators, methods, and feedback.
The national policy project has the largest proportion of special grants, which can be said to be of high importance.
Although the Ministry of Education is a subsidiary and has discretion, it can be said that each city and provincial education office and front-line schools are the main organizations that actually promote and implement the project.
Therefore, it is important to provide a budget for the formation and promotion of national initiatives, but it is important to understand and listen to the actual situation at the site.