Input 2021.02.18 14:03 | Revision 2021.02.18 14:37
The 14th administrative administration of the Seoul Administrative Court (Presiding Judge Sang-hoon Lee) ruled that the designated cancellation was canceled at a hearing on the “lawsuit for canceling the designation of self-accidents” filed against the Seoul Superintendent of Education by Bae Jae-go and Sehwa High School at 2 pm
The issue of this lawsuit was whether the re-designation evaluation of the company violated the’trust protection principle’. The court believes that the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education raised the standard score from 60 points to 70 points four months before the redesignation evaluation of own high schools last year, violating the principle of trust protection.
In July 2019, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education decided to cancel the designation of own high schools for eight of the 13 private high schools that were subject to operational performance evaluation, including Paejae High School and Sehwa High School, which did not meet the standard score.
The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education evaluated the operational performance of each school for five years with indicators such as school operation, curriculum operation, teacher expertise, financial and facility conditions, school satisfaction, and discretionary evaluation by the Office of Education, and if it did not exceed 70 points, it canceled the designation of its own high school. The previous standard score was 60, and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education delivered it to the school about four months before the start of the evaluation.
The private high schools then argued that it would be against the protection of trust to be evaluated for the past five years with standards and indicators that were changed against the school just before the evaluation. It is said that the Office of Education arbitrarily changed the index on the premise of’self-accident exit’. These private high schools have maintained their status until now by filing an application for temporary injunction with the court for suspension of designation cancellation and administrative lawsuits.
As the judiciary gives the hands of Bae Jae High and Sehwa High, the remaining six private high schools (Kyunghee High School, Sungmun High School, Shinil High School, Lee Daebu High School, Joongang High School, and Handae High School) will be able to maintain their status as well. The sentence for the first trial of Soongmun High School and Shinil High School is scheduled for the 23rd of next month, and the rest of the schools have only been sentenced.
It seems that the ruling on the day was also affected by the victory of Haeundae High School in Busan, which was eliminated from the redesignation evaluation of its own high school last year. Haeundae High School received an overall score of 54.5 points (base score 70) in the redesignation evaluation, and the designation of its own high school was canceled.
At the time, the Busan District Court said, “The Busan Metropolitan Office of Education (at the time of redesignation evaluation in 2019) increased the cut line by 10 points from 2014, and expanded the maximum deduction by 9 points due to cadastral cases such as audit.” It is difficult to predict the change in advance, but the Busan Office of Education applied it retrospectively.”
However, the controversy over the private high school is expected to continue until the final decision of the Constitutional Court. Earlier, 24 private high schools, foreign high schools, and international high schools have requested a constitutional complaint, claiming that the revision of the Enforcement Decree of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act for the abolition of schools constitutes a violation of basic rights. According to the’Measures for Resolving High School Ranking’ announced by the Ministry of Education, private high schools, foreign language high schools, and international high schools will be converted to general high schools in March 2025.
After the ruling, Sehwa High School principal Kim Jae-yoon met with reporters and said, “I have been teaching students hard in accordance with the educational policy so far, so I thought it was unfair to cancel the designation,” and “I will continue my educational activities.”
When asked if they are discussing with other private high schools with the remaining sentence, he said, “We can’t predict because we’ve been doing (lawsuit) with the same purpose, but we are waiting for a lot of conversations.”