On Thursday 21st June, the Ministry of Education organized "Joint Workshop for the Participation of Arts Education" at the Stanford Hotel and Resort in Tongyoung with the participation of 176 heads of Local Education Offices and 17 Directors of Arts Education of Local Offices of Education.

The purpose of this workshop was to find ways to link the promotion of arts education with regional communities and to discuss mid- to long-term arts education policies.

On the first day, exemplary cases were exchanged and the Deputy Minister of the Office of School Innovation Support of the Ministry of Education, supervisors, teachers and parents participated in the "School's Arts Education Policy Discussion" and reaffirmed that they shared some common views on arts education and that it has to become accessible to all students.

The panels discussed "the role of the MOE-Local Offices of Education-Schools" and came to conclusion that the MOE has to continuously promote policies to link arts education with school curricula and that schools need to faithfully carry out those policies, and that Local Offices of Education need to build an organizational system to actively help carry out those policies.

<Panel's opinion>

- "Schools with an emphasis on Arts Education"＊ should be promoted, and space for arts education, expositions and presentations should be created"

   - Yoon Gye Sook; Principal of Education of Kyonggido Euijeongbu Local Education Office

    ＊ Schools that have a curriculum with an emphasis on arts education for students with talent and aptitude to arts

- "It is hard for an individual teacher to take on full responsibility for arts education"

   - Park Tae Soo; Suncheon Boksung High School Teacher

On the "Plan for Regional Networking for Revitalizing School-centered Arts Education," all panels agreed that "the participation of students in arts education is limited, because the resourced at schools are insufficient."

<Panel's opinion> 

- "We have to strengthen the role of the 177 Local Education Office's 'Regional Arts Education consultative body' that links schools with regional communities."

   - Min Byounggwan, Seoul Dongjak Local Education Office Principal of Education

- "We need to arrange a cooperation system between schools and local governments in order to use various culture and arts resources outside of schools."

   - Choi Kyongmi; Parent of a student at Kyongnam Dongwon Middle School

- "In order to strengthen student education and public education, we need to change the support system. In the original program, individual arts teachers have been supported. That has to change. We need a system that supports the art education program as a whole."

   - Bae Eun Young, Daejeon Local Education Office School Vice-Commissioner

On the second day of the event, the MOE visited a closed-down school that the local education office of Kyungsangnamdo has renovated for the use of arts education.

Recently, the Local Education Offices, in order to faithfully support arts education, have created an arts education space to enhance the satisfaction of public arts education, by renovating old, closed-down schools.

The following is the examples of arts education space created by renovating closed-down schools or by using unused spaces in schools.

Deputy Minister Lee Joong Hyun of the Office of School Innovation Support of the Ministry of Education said, "We will do our utmost, so that schools can provide arts education tailored to each individual student's demands, and also to promote students' fundamental democratic values and to refine their knowledge in culture and arts," adding that "Schools and local education offices will cooperate to support faithfully the arts curriculum and to chage the school culture, so that various arts resources can be used by schools. We will also actively build school-local government cooperation support systems to meet those demands."

*unofficial translation