School for all children between the ages of six and fifteen is free. Senior high schools, for students aged fifteen to eighteen, do charge tuition fees in order to supplement government funding, but these fees do not appear burdensome enough to prevent students from attending. School funding is very centralized, with local school systems deriving 80% of their revenue from the central Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) budget. The local systems are also funded to a much smaller degree through revenue transferred from local governing bodies, internal assets, locally issued bonds, school admission fees and tuition. The Metropolitan and Provincial Offices of Education can spend the money from MEST as they see fit, though it is a matter of funds being transferred to a lower level of the same overall organization rather than an intergovernmental transfer of funds. The central ministry directly funds teachers’ salaries in elementary and lower secondary school as well as preschool programs.
Private schools receive a small amount of government funding and subsidies, but are primarily financed through tuition fees and support from private donors and organizations. South Korea spends $7,652 per student, as compared to the OECD average of $8,868. However, this represents 7.6% of South Korea’s GDP spent on education, as compared to the OECD average of 6.1%. This is the third-highest percent of GDP spent on education among OECD countries, after Iceland and Denmark.