SEOUL: The chief official in charge of the administration of South Korea’s annual national college entrance exam stepped down on Wednesday (Dec 10) to take responsibility for the excessive difficulty of the 2025 English exam paper.
Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation President Oh Seung-geol resigned after acknowledging that the English section of the College Scholastic Ability Test, or Suneung, administered on Nov 13, was out of line with the purpose of absolute grading, with just 3.11 per cent of total test-takers earning the top grade.
Only 15,154 of test-takers earned a highest-grade score of 90 or above, the lowest proportion since English shifted to an absolute grading system in 2018. This is lower than the 4 per cent threshold used for the top grade under the relative grading system used for other subjects.
In 2024, 6.22 per cent of test-takers received the top grade in English.
On Dec 4, as official test results were released, Mr Oh expressed regret that the difficulty level of the English section had turned out to be out of line with the purpose of absolute grading.
“For the English section, we found many questions that were similar to those used in private mock tests during the development process, so we changed several of them,” he said.
“In so doing, we were not able to properly assess the difficulty level of some questions.”
Of the 12 previous agency chiefs, only four have served out their full three-year terms. Most resigned over test-setting errors. Oh is the first to step down over a test’s difficulty. - The Korea Herald/ANN
