Let's Find and Fix Ourselves... Gyeongnam Office of Education Conducts Autonomous Comprehensive Audits at 535 Schools This Year

Utilization of Gratitude Guide and Self-Checklists

Strengthening Support for Democratic and Autonomous School Management

Gyeongnam Office of Education.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Seryeong] The Gyeongnam Office of Education is strengthening support for autonomous comprehensive audits centered on voluntary prevention at school sites.

The autonomous comprehensive audit is a system in which schools independently establish audit plans and organize audit teams to autonomously audit overall school operations.

To promote democratic school management and activate school autonomy, the Gyeongnam Office of Education announced that it established a position responsible for autonomous comprehensive audits within the Audit Office as of March 1.

This year, autonomous comprehensive audits will be conducted at 535 elementary, middle, and high schools that wish to participate, and if they achieve a certain score in the year-end evaluation, they will be exempt from comprehensive audits the following year.

Each school conducts audits in three stages using the autonomous audit guidebook and self-checklist developed by the provincial Office of Education.

In the first stage, the person in charge of the work performs a self-check, and in the second stage, internal auditors conduct cross audits.

In the third stage, internal and external experts in education participate in the review, including auditors from the provincial Office of Education, external auditors in academic and accounting fields, lawyers, certified public accountants, architects, and other external experts.

This audit involves 135 lawyers, 19 certified public accountants, 42 tax accountants, 18 architects, 33 certified labor consultants, and 189 external auditors in the fields of academic affairs, general administration, and accounting.

The provincial Office of Education stated that it has signed business agreements with the Gyeongnam Bar Association, Busan Certified Public Accountants Association, Busan Tax Accountants Association, Gyeongnam Architects Association, and the Busan-Ulsan-Gyeongnam branch of the Korea Certified Labor Consultants Association to ensure audit transparency and professionalism.

Lawyers, certified public accountants or tax accountants, and certified labor consultants will provide year-round field-specific advice and consulting for each school, and architects will additionally support schools with older buildings rated C grade through special partnerships.

Measures to reduce workload include reducing the number of self-check items, publishing a casebook of autonomous comprehensive audits, discovering excellent schools in self-check and improvement, drastically reducing administrative tasks such as various reporting materials, and forming regional on-site support inspection teams.

An education office official said, “We are focusing on autonomous and preventive comprehensive audit administration, such as registering copyrights for three types of materials?the autonomous comprehensive audit guidebook, self-check manual, operation manual, and audit casebook?with the Korea Copyright Commission in 2020.”

Audit Officer Lee Minjae said, “We will expand autonomous comprehensive audits that find and correct problems on their own to support democratic and autonomous school management.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.