Over 60,000 students dropped out of school in 2009: report

SEOUL, June 20 (Yonhap) -- More than 60,000 elementary, middle and high school students dropped out of school nationwide in 2009 and some 20 percent of them were from Seoul, a report showed Monday.
According to the study released by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) and the Future and Symmetry Institution, 61,910 students in primary, middle and high schools in South Korea failed to graduate in 2009, accounting for 0.85 percent of a total of 7.23 million pupils.
The report said that the dropout rate surged to 1.05 percent in the capital, as 13,381 Seoul students out of 1.27 million left school before they finished their studies in the same year.
In a separate survey conducted by the institution, 32.2 percent of 3,373 elementary, middle and high school students in Seoul responded that they have thought of dropping out of school at least once.
They answered that they wanted to leave school because they were not interested in studying or they received poor results, according to the survey.
It said that only 22.3 percent of dropouts returned to school.
"The students drop out of school not directly because they are not doing well in school, but because they feel they are discriminated or isolated based on their lower grades," said an official from the SMOE. "We will map out proper measures to encourage them to come back to school."
brk@yna.co.kr