'Seoul Learn' is an innovation in educational policy for the following reasons:

1. By leveraging private educational content, Seoul Learn overcomes the traditional approach that tries to tackle the educational gap only through public education. The use of private content dramatically increases the vulnerable class’ access to education.
2. By providing private educational content on a public platform free of charge, Seoul Learn alleviates the burden of private education fees for the underprivileged class and prevents education from causing further inequalities.
3. By using a new educational platform applying innovative technologies, such as AI and big data, members of Seoul Learn will be able to take advantage of individually customized educational services regardless of time and place.

Currently, 'Seoul Learn' is in the implementation stage. Since 2021, students from low-income families have been provided with educational content, 1:1 mentoring, and books through Seoul Learn. Also, 'Seoul Learn' is upgrading its service to provide more to its members.

1. First, it will expand the scope of eligible beneficiaries so that more adolescents can use Seoul Learn. To do so, the SMG is revising related ordinances.
2. More content will be available, including courses about certificates, new languages, and reading skills. Additionally, college admissions consulting provided by teachers and admission experts will be available.
3. As for mentoring, it will cover more areas, including art and sport, other than traditional major subjects.
4. More books will be provided free of charge to relieve the economic burden of learning.
5. Seoul has embarked on creating its platform. Once completed, it will offer customized education and interactive, hands-on online education.

In 2021, the SMG and the office of education provided 60,000 smart devices to low-income students. Now, they are providing financial support for the Internet. Fourteen educational content providers participating in Seoul Learn are supplying their products at 60% cheaper than the market price. Some businesses are donating books. This enables Seoul to provide services to vulnerable students without any cost. And many universities select the best mentors from their excellent talent pool.

Members can take free courses previously unavailable due to their high costs. They can also solicit advice from mentors. This implies an improvement in their access to education. For college mentors, it is an opportunity to enjoy more off-campus activities that have long disappeared. In addition, mentors can pursue career development while getting financial support by joining the project. Businesses can expect positive marketing effects through socially responsible activities.

Since its launch, more than 16,000 people have joined Seoul Learn within a year. However, to evaluate the outcome more objectively, the SMG asked Hankook Research for more detailed surveys. After three rounds of assessment from September to December 2021, Seoul Learn turned out to have gained positive feedback from the public, scoring 85 in overall satisfaction and 88 in willingness to continue using the service.

Although there is not enough objective data as Seoul Learn is at its early stage, enough cases proved that it helped students with college admissions, career decisions, and academic achievements. Notably, some previous members of Seoul Learn are now contributing to the project as mentors, showing the virtuous cycle of this program. Seoul believes that educational content provided on public platforms can help tackle unequal access to education and contribute to social integration by creating a fair society where anyone can succeed.

One of the challenges we faced while planning and executing the Seoul Learn project was voices that we should not leverage the private education market to enhance the quality of public education. We agreed to this idea and were fully aware that that was the ideal goal.

Nevertheless, rich parents hire more qualified private tutors for their children and lay in educational opportunities to inherit their wealth. We convinced opponents that vulnerable teenagers should never be left behind against this backdrop. We stressed that these students could not learn as much as they wanted simply due to socioeconomic issues they face in real life. Consequently, Seoul Learn was recognized as an educational welfare policy, and we were able to run the project stably.

To successfully run Seoul Learn, we must secure the basic physical condition for remote learning, such as computers and the Internet. This to prevent learning disruption caused by economic status and guarantee stable remote learning amid the pandemic, the city government, district offices, and the office of education shared resources. As a result, 59,899 laptops and tablet PCs for underprivileged students were sent to 1,168 schools between April 2020 and February 2021. Additionally, the SMG is paying for one Internet account for each low-income household to share their burden.

Another project Seoul is running is “PC of Love.” It is a program that collects and upgrades old computers to send free computers to low-income families or related agencies. This project will allow Seoul to meet additional computer demand with enough flexibility.

'Seoul Learn' is gaining attention from other local governments. Fourteen municipal governments have already called or inquired to schedule a visit to the SMG. However, Seoul hopes these governments do not spend extra money to build a similar learning page. Instead, the SMG will embed a feature in the newly-developed platform, so interested governments can use Seoul’s infrastructure. Educational inequity triggered by parents’ economic status is not limited to Korean society. Most member countries of the OECD are facing the same issue. If any country needs our help, Seoul is always ready to share the know-how.

Education has two different powers. One is the power to make an ordinary person highly successful, but the other is the power to solidify the pre-existing social structure. Thus, it is imperative to guarantee equal opportunities to prevent education from becoming a tool to aggravate the inequality issue.

Seoul’s ultimate goal is to reduce unequal educational opportunities by offering different learning content to adolescents with limited access to learning resources due to socioeconomic reasons. The SMG is determined to ensure that these students do not have limited opportunities despite their passion and determination. A fair society where there is no educational inequity and where anyone can be successful is the society Seoul will create in the future. And this is the value to learn through Seoul Learn.