The education ministry has proposed reducing the number of new teachers as the number of students continues to decline across the country.

According to a four-year plan for teaching staff in public schools from 2024, the ministry said it would select three-thousand-200 elementary schools teachers and four-thousand-500 middle and high school teachers next year, a decrease of over 300 compared to this year's hires.

The hiring will further drop to between 26-hundred and 29-hundred in 2026 and 2027 for elementary schools, and to three-thousand-500 and four-thousand for middle and high schools, respectively.

According to Statistics Korea in 2021, the number of students in the public school system was forecast to fall around 13 percent to 580-thousand by 2027.

Under the announced plan, the student-to-teacher ratio in elementary schools is expected to stand at12-point-four, and the student-per-class average will come to 15-point-nine by 2027, both far below OECD averages.