Six out of 14 elite high schools in Seoul metropolitan city will be stripped of their privileges for improperly implementing their curriculum, the Seoul educational office said Friday.

The office, however, withheld a decision on two other schools after they vowed to give up their right to select students based on their test scores.

The phase-out of private high schools with the right to autonomously run their curriculum was a key election pledge by Seoul education chief Cho Hi-yeon in the June local elections. The schools have been blamed for causing disparities in learning opportunities among students by abusing their leeway in running their curriculum to focus only on college entrance exams. 

The six schools whose status was revoked will have to turn into ordinary private schools from the 2016 school year, officials said. (Yonhap)