Court orders to suspend validity of answer to a CSAT question

A court ordered on Wednesday to suspend the validity of the answer to Question 20 in Bioscience II section of this year’s College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Eval‎uation (KICE) decided not to file an appeal against the ruling, and Gahng Tae-joong, chief of the test agency, took responsibility for the situation and resigned immediately after the ruling came out.

The Seoul Administrative Court ordered to cancel the answer to Question 20 of the Bioscience II section in a lawsuit filed by 92 test-takers calling for a cancellation of the answer. The court said there is an obvious error in Question 20, which makes it impossible for test-takers to choose the correct answer, or at least gives them a serious obstacle. It went on to say that the Question 20 has lost its effectiveness as an index of eval‎uation since it cannot play a basic role of measuring test-takers’ learning ability required for college education, adding it is against the law for the evaluation agency to decide that the correct answer to Question 20 is number 5.

The KICE accepted all answers to the Question 20 of the Bioscience II section chosen by all 6,515 test-takers and those who chose an answer other than number 5 earned two points as a result. The test-takers of the Bioscience II, who for the first time received a CSAT report with a blank in the Bioscience II section, were able to check their final score on the KICE website at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

KICE Chief Gahng held a press briefing in Sejong after the ruling came out and said he would resign from his post taking the responsibility for the situation. A KICE official said the agency would not appeal against the ruling because it does not want to cause further damage to the students and their parents.


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