President Yoon Suk Yeol did not mean making the annual college entrance exam easier when he said the test should exclude what is not taught at schools, his office said Friday, after the remark sparked confusion about how easy or difficult the test will be.
Yoon instructed Education Minister Lee Ju-ho the previous day to exclude material not covered by public education from the College Scholastic Ability Test, or Suneung in Korean, amid criticism the test includes extremely hard questions that students without private tutoring cannot solve.
The remark led to criticism there could be confusion among students ahead of the November exam, with one newspaper running the headline “Make Suneung easier.”
“President Yoon Suk Yeol was not talking about an ‘easy Suneung’ or a ‘hard Suneung,'” senior presidential secretary for press affairs Kim Eun-hye said in a written briefing.
“A fair assessment ability is the essence of all exams, so while keeping the assessment ability, exclude areas not covered by the public education curriculum from Suneung,” she quoted him as saying.
Yoon said the government cannot stop people from resorting to private education in order to supplement what they learn through the public education curriculum because that is a freedom of choice, but setting exam questions on material that is not taught by public education, such as nonliterary Korean language questions or questions based on a fusion of subjects, will push people toward private education.
“It’s very unfair and unjust,” he was quoted as saying. “When people see such a reality, they think the education authorities and the private education industry are conspiring together.”
Yoon had instructed Lee the previous day to come up with ways to reduce private education expenses, citing their recent increase.
Lee was briefing Yoon on education reforms, one of the top three reforms pushed by the administration, along with labor and pensions.
The CSAT is one of the nation’s most important academic events, during which airplane takeoffs and landings are banned nationwide for the English listening portion.
Source: Yonhap News Agency