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What is wrong with Korean scholastic test-making system?

What is wrong with Korean scholastic test-making system?

Posted November. 19, 2014 06:40,   

한국어

The Education Ministry and the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) have internally decided to accept two answers for the question no. 25 in English of this year’s college scholastic ability test. The official announcement will be made next Monday.

“We have no choice but to accept two answers because the error was clear in the question no. 25 in English unlike the controversial one in Life Science II,” multiple sources from the Education Ministry and the KICE said. “As the process requires a final approval by the working-level review committee for appeals and the review committee for appeals, the official announcement will be made next Monday when the final answers are announced. The controversial English question is about selecting the wrong description of a graph on the use of social media by American youths, and the answer was announced to be the fourth option. However, some pointed out that the fifth option -- “It increased 18 percent” – was wrong because it did not use “percentage points (%p)” to the graph that showed an increase from 2 percent to 20 percent.

However, as the question no. 8 of Life Science II does not have a clear error like the one in English, people believe it requires an in-depth review by experts for a definitive answer. The controversial question asks about the process of colon bacillus generating enzyme by which milk sugar can be converted to glucose. Some claimed, "Colon bacillus can combine polymerase in the absence of milk sugar.”

As an error in the annual college entrance test is repeated again this year following last year, critics say that an overall improvement is needed in the test-making system as well as the KICE and the Education Ministry, which supervises the KICE. Both the Education Ministry and the KICE announced that they would cross-examine questions more thoroughly to prevent an error. Nonetheless, the error in mathematical unit in the option proves that the improvement measure did not work at all. In response, the Education Ministry said, “After completing the appeal process on questions and the rescue measures for students who were affected by the error in World Geography last year, we will come up with a measure to improve the process of developing test questions.”