The Jeollanam-do Office of Education and the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education will overhaul their autonomous regulations in line with the integration of Gwangju and Jeonnam education administrations on July 1. The move aims to resolve conflicts and overlaps between the two sets of regulations and establish a unified administrative system, securing policy consistency and external credibility for the merged education office.
"The integration of autonomous regulations is more than a simple institutional overhaul — it is a practical first step toward Gwangju and Jeonnam moving forward as a single educational community," Lee Seon-guk, director-general of administration at the Jeonnam Office of Education, said on the 21st. "We will do our utmost in legislative and administrative preparations to ensure the new era of educational autonomy opens smoothly on July 1."
The Jeonnam and Gwangju offices of education currently hold 361 and 318 autonomous regulations, respectively.
Through a working-level consultative body, the two education offices have selected 100 essential autonomous regulations that can be applied immediately upon integration as priority targets, and decided to reorganize their regulations following a phased principle of "essentials → stabilization → unification → completion."
Before the launch of the integrated education office, essential autonomous regulations covering institutional operations and financial management and execution will be overhauled first. After the launch, regulations will be gradually unified to reflect regional characteristics and stakeholder interests. Starting with the preparation of the integrated regulations draft in April, followed by legislative notice and joint review in May, and reporting to the transition committee and finalizing the legislative draft in June, the plan calls for promulgating and enforcing the autonomous regulations simultaneously with the launch of the integrated education office on July 1.
Some autonomous regulations requiring political judgment will be pursued under a separate plan, and the offices plan to continue identifying additional regulations for integration beyond the essential ones to minimize administrative gaps.
In addition, pre-legislative procedures such as legislative notice, gender impact assessment, and corruption impact assessment — which had been carried out by the departments in charge of each regulation — will be handled collectively by the legal affairs departments of both education offices, reducing the administrative burden on individual departments and expediting legislation.
