The purpose of allocating 'Special Governmental Subsidy' based upon 'Fiscal Assistant Act for Local Education' lies in promoting balanced development of education. The subsidy is thus spend when there happens unexpected fiscal needs such as executing ...
The purpose of allocating 'Special Governmental Subsidy' based upon 'Fiscal Assistant Act for Local Education' lies in promoting balanced development of education. The subsidy is thus spend when there happens unexpected fiscal needs such as executing national educational agenda or urgent issues for local education. While its budget is limited to 4% of 20% of domestic tax, its revenue can be divided into 60% of national agenda, 30% of urgent needs for local education and 10% of disaster funds. In 2008 fiscal year, about 30.6 trillion won out of 36 trillion won of national budget for education was allocated for this kind of fiscal subsidy for local education. While this budget is generally divided into 96% of normal needs and 4% of special needs, the total amount of the latter reaches to about 1,170 billion won. However, such a huge amount of public funds is beyond public surveillance. In this regard, this paper aims to assess whether lacking of outside control impacts on the performance of this public funds. For the sake of evaluating performance, this paper employes four criteria including responsiveness, purposefulness, fairness and universal adoptability.
Research results reveal the following. First, it appeared that responsiveness has been failed by unproportional allocation of the money which focused on the end of each fiscal year. For example, 214 billions amounted to 45% of the total budget has been distributed only in November and December 2005. Again, 492 billions of 28% of the total budget was spend in December 2006. Furthermore, total 70.9 billions of 30% of the local funds has been spend on December 28, 2005. Similarly, 152 billions (61.6% of the local funds) and 95.8 billions (33.8% of the local funds) have been allocated on December 27 in 2006 and December 17 in 2007 each.
Deviance of purposefulness could be found as well. For instance, such events titled as 'fiscal needs for special tasks' were frequently used for the justification of 'Special Governmental Subsidy.' However, those fundings had little relevance with educational purposes. Not only distributing to local educational institutions without clarifying specific needs but also allocating to local schools as a way of encouraging local schools wasn't a rare phenomenon. Only 4.5% of disaster funds has been actually executed for meeting the needs.
Fairness wasn't satisfied as well. Analysis of 831 events in 30 regions from 2005 to 2007 revealed that 12% of the high ranking regions has absorbed about 40 to 60% of the total revenue. Among those beneficiaries, Gyeongi-do which took 13.27% of 37.6 billions ranked the highest and Jeju-do was the lowest taking only 2.63% of 7.5 billions.
In order to evaluate the effects of lacking of outside control on universal adoptability, school-based support programs from 2005 to 2007 have been analyzed. It turned out that such schools belong to incumbent lawmakers spared much better than those schools who didn't have lawmakers in action. It is thus plausible to conclude that there exists 'profit-seeking' based upon a entrenched connection between Educational Board in the parliament and Ministry of Education in the government.