Abstract
The decrease in population of school age is one of major influencing factor of transformative educational environment. After the nineteen eighties, the population of South Korea has increased step by step, but the population of school age has been decreasing rapidly by low birth rate. As a result, closed school by merger and abolition of small school occurred all over the country. The closed school needed effective function as center of local community. Consequently the purpose of this study is to provide basic data for effective policy making of closed school by comparative analysis of educational environment such as number of students, schools, students per class, status of usage of closed school of the east area and the west area divided by The Tae Baek Mountains in the Gangwon-do, which has the least students in the nationwide. The results of this study are summarized as follows: 1) Gangwon-do has high decreasing rate of population, schools and students compared with other provinces. However it has significantly low number of students per class. 2) The number of students, schools of the west area in Gangwon-do outnumbers that of the east area. However the number of students per class of the east area in Gangwon-do lesser than that of the west area.