Education in North Korea is universal and state-funded schooling by the government. The self-reported national literacy rate for citizens at age of 15 and older is 100 percent (approx.). As of 2021, UNESCO Institute for Statistics does not report any data for North Korea's literacy rates. Children go through one year of kindergarten, four years of primary education, six years of secondary education, and then on to university. In 1988, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported that North Korea had 35,000 preprimary, 60,000 primary, 111,000 secondary, 23,000 college and university, and 4,000 other postsecondary teachers. History Formal education has played a central role in the social and cultural development of both traditional Korea and contemporary North Korea. During the Joseon Dynasty, the royal court established a system of schools that taught Confucian subjects in the provinces as well as in four central secondary schools in the capital. There was no state-supported system of primary education. During the 15th century, state-supported schools declined in quality and were supplanted in importance by private academies, the seowon, centers of a Neo-Confucian revival in the 16th century. Higher education was provided by the Seonggyungwan, the Confucian national university, in Seoul. Its enrollment was limited to 200 students who had passed the lower civil-service examinations and were preparing for the highest examinations. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw major educational changes. The seewan were abolished by the central government. Christian missionaries established modern schools that taught Western curricula. Among them was the first school for women, Ehwa Woman's University, established by American Methodist missionaries as a primary school in Seoul in 1886. During the last years of the dynasty, as many as 3,000 private schools that taught modern subjects to both sexes were founded by missionaries and others. Most of these schools were concentrated in the northern part of Korea. After Japan annexed Korea in 1910, the colonial regime established an educational system with two goals: to give Koreans a minimal education designed to train them for subordinate roles in a modern economy and make them loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor; and to provide a higher quality education for Japanese expatriates who had settled in large numbers on the Korean Peninsula. The Japanese invested more resources in the latter, and opportunities for Koreans were severely limited. A state university modeled on Tokyo Imperial University was established in Seoul