A total of 163 local students have been identified as being guilty of admissions fraud at eight foreign schools in Seoul as part of an ongoing investigation by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education began conducting a special audit of Seoul’s 19 international schools in October 2012. According to officials at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the offending schools were subsequently ordered to dismiss the 163 students who did not meet the admission requirements.

Under the law, local students are only allowed to enroll into international schools if either one of their parents is a foreign national or a parent and their child has resided overseas for at least three years. The demographic of the school’s total enrollment of the latter, however, cannot exceed 30 percent.

According to officials at the office of education, of the 163 students caught, 90 students failed to meet the required period of residing overseas, 59 students had been admitted with insufficient documents and 14 students were not qualified to attend foreign schools because their parents did not meet the foreign national requirement. Among the eight schools found guilty of admitting under-qualified local students, the French school of Xavier had the largest number of suspicious student enrollments with a whopping 91 students.

“We stopped short of nullifying their admissions to allow them to continue their studies at other local schools, and decided not to impose any administrative punishment on the institutions as we’ve learned that they did not have fraudulent intentions in accepting them,” Chang Myung-soo, an official of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, was quoted as saying by Yonhap News.

“If the schools fail to follow our instructions to dismiss the students, we will come up with additional measures such as forcing them to reduce their entrance quotas,” he said, adding that plans were underway for additional investigations into two more international schools suspected of admission fraud.

<한글 번역>

부정입학으로 학생 150명 제적

계속된 서울시교육청 조사를 통해 서울시 8개 외국인학교에서 총 163명 학생이 부정 입학에 연루된 것으로 드러났다.

서울시교육청은 지난해 8월부터 시내 19개 외국인학교를 대상으로 특별수사를 진행해왔다. 서울시교육청 관리자에 의하면, 문제의 학교들은 입학자격 미달자 163명의 학생을 출교 조치하라고 지시 받았다.

법적으로 외국인학교는 학생들의 부모 중 한 명이 외국인이거나 외국 거주기간이 3년 이상이어야만 입학이 가능하다. 그러나 두 번째 조건에 해당하는 조건으로 입학할 수 있는 학생 정원은 재학생의 30프로를 넘을 수 없다.