Alleged teacher-tutor collusion on test rattles high school

When a high student in Seoul saw the same questions his tutor used in tutoring in the real test at school, he thought this unusual and reported it to the school.

“I found it weird because the questions were exactly the same, and one day, I saw my tutor getting out of a car with my school’s English teacher,” the student said. “It turned out that my tutor was my English teacher’s daughter and I grew suspicious over whether she stole the test sheet.”

One of the student’s parent said, “Cho never mentioned that she was the English teacher’s daughter and we had no idea because she used a false name.”

As suspicion over the tampering of test sheets for English rose, the school let four English teachers who wrote the questions compare tutoring materials and notebooks. Twenty-one out of 24 questions in “English 1” and 14 of 17 questions in “Advanced English Conversation” were similar enough to cause suspicion.

The correct answers to three descriptive questions on the test were written in the tutor’s notebook. The answers to questions made by a schoolteacher were also in the tutor’s handwriting.

Urging an investigation, one teacher said, “Since we made many questions meant to develop creativity as encouraged by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, it is practically impossible to provide such tutoring without stealing questions.”

Cho suddenly stopped tutoring at the end of November last year when the suspicion grew.

The English teacher and the school claim the incident was only “coincidence.” The teacher said, “I didn’t know that my daughter was teaching my student. (The student got a good grade because) my daughter analyzed all of the tests from the past three years and did her best.”

The Dong-A Ilbo tried to contact the tutor several times but she declined to be interviewed.

The school principal told Dong-A over the phone, “The teacher and her daughter might have talked about the tests at home, but stealing the test sheet is impossible because security is tight.”

School teachers said, however, that test questions could be leaked after they are made.

If a teacher is confirmed to have leaked a test sheet, a huge fallout is expected because the school was introduced in 2009 as one “without private tutoring” by the media and selected as a “school without private education” by the Seoul education office.

Schools designated as having no private education have received 300 million won (268,456 U.S. dollars) in subsidies under a program started in 2009 to strengthen public education.

The school requested teachers who agreed with students in raising questions at a recent board meeting to submit a document on what they told police. It also relieved a homeroom teacher for defaming the school by leaking the problem outside of the school.

The suspicion over the leak is also causing a huge backlash with parents of students attending the school. This is because the school is in Seoul’s rich Gangnam district, an area known for high educational zeal in which even one or two GPA points could make a big difference in college entrance.

One parent posted on the school’s homepage, “If the school fails to conduct a proper investigation, I will sue the school.” The posting was removed less than 20 minutes after it was posted.

The father of the student whistleblower said, “Though my son is a high school student, I’m proud of him because he questioned an unrighteous thing,” adding, “The truth should come out so that an adults’ mistake doesn’t hurt my child again.”