Production of CSAT Found to Be Porous with Loopholes

Among the 460 CSAT test makers in 2003 and 2004, 30 have turned out to be unqualified.

On March 26, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) instructed Chung Kang-chung, the president of the Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation which oversees the CSAT, to take disciplinary action against eight employees, including the director of the CSAT research department identified by an initial, L.

Among the unqualified found by a special audit from BAI were five professors whose children were CSAT takers, 12 who did not have qualifications as full-time college lecturers or above, and 13 high school teachers with less than five years experience.

Twenty among them were test makers while 10 were reviewers who evaluate the level of difficulty.

The BAI also found negligence on the part of the institute in that the president appointed the test takers and reviewers without evaluation by its in-house inspection board.

“As the deadline for the CSAT drew nearer, the institute recruited test makers by using a limited pool of human resources,” Kim Jae-seon, director of the Social Welfare Inspection Bureau at the BAI. “And thus, these unqualified personnel were recruited.”

There is also an issue of equality as for the test makers for 2004 of which 58 percent were Seoul National University professors. As for the high school teachers who reviewed the test, 93 percent were working in the Seoul metropolitan area. The BAI also found that the institute lacked regulations on the selection of test makers and question types, security related to the printing and scoring of the test, and the notification of test scores.

The BAI stopped short of requesting disciplinary action against the Office for Government Policy Coordination and the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, the two government organizations which oversee the institute. The watchdog proposed that the institute should be supervised by a single higher government authority. The BAI started the audit into the institute in February, following a request by 970 test takers.

Young-Hae Choi yhchoi65@donga.com