Can Korea make essay-based CSAT grading fair?

Oh Se-jung

The author is a professor emeritus of physics and astronomy and a former president of Seoul National <a href="https://jiuniversity.com/jackson-state-university-pursues-top-research-status-wxxv-news-25/” title=”Jackson State University pursues top research status – WXXV News 25″>University. 

At a briefing to the presidential office on Aug. 5, the National Education Commission, which sets long-term national education and college admissions policy, said it would pursue reforms introducing written-response and essay questions to the College Scholastic Ability Test, or CSAT, while applying absolute grading to all subjects

President Lee Jae Myung welcomed the proposal. In an era when AI can provide better answers than people, he said, education must cultivate the ability to ask good questions. He went so far as to say the current multiple-choice CSAT “ruins children for the convenience of adults doing the grading.” For an administration criticized for lacking major education policies, this willingness to pursue reform is encouraging.

Strictly speaking, however, the proposal remains only an idea under discussion. The commission is drafting a national education development plan for 2028 through 2037, with 11 special committees examining issues such as admissions, literacy and private education. The essay-based CSAT proposal emerged from the admissions committee. A draft is expected around late October after public deliberation, with the final plan scheduled for late March next year.

Yet because college admissions are so sensitive, controversy erupted immediately. On Aug. 12, lawmakers on the National Assembly Education Committee warned that written and essay questions could fuel private tutoring. National Education Commission Chair Cha Jung-in replied that broad reading should be sufficient but offered no specific safeguards

Education groups are sharply divided. The civic group World Without Worries About Shadow Education welcomed the idea, declaring that 81 years after liberation, Korea should move beyond five-choice tests toward “liberating thought” through written assessments. The same day, Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations President Kang Joo-ho stressed the practical difficulties, warning that such assessments could cause confusion in admissions and expand private education.

Most educators agree that today’s five-choice CSAT is ill-suited to developing future talent. In the AI era, when computers can access vast stores of knowledge, simply memorizing existing information is less valuable than generating original ideas. The multiple-choice exam designed to select talent for the industrial age has reached the end of its useful life

Agreement on an alternative, however, remains elusive. The obvious option is written-response and essay questions, yet this has not happened because no grading system has established objectivity, fairness and reliability convincing enough for the public. Japan spent nearly a decade preparing similar university admissions reforms but abandoned written questions at the final stage over concerns about grading fairness.

Ultimately, whether Korea can adopt essay-based admissions depends less on educational ideals than on whether grading can be sufficiently fair and accurate to command public confidence

Can the commission overcome that obstacle this time? It has suggested AI-assisted grading, but how reliably it would work remains uncertain. The challenge is especially acute in Korea, where many believe admission to a particular university can determine a person’s future, as discussed in Seo Nam-soo and Bae Sang-hoon’s “College Admissions System: Status System or Education System?” (2022).

Students and parents are therefore extraordinarily sensitive to fairness in admissions. That sensitivity also helps explain the enormous repercussions of the so-called Cho Kuk scandal. If admissions are primarily an educational selection process, evaluators can reasonably consider a student’s future potential even when current ability is somewhat lacking. But if admissions function as a mechanism for determining social status, objective measurement of present ability becomes paramount.

In that sense, introducing written and essay assessments and absolute grading into the CSAT and school records is not merely an educational issue. It is a social one, and reform can succeed only if it satisfies the public’s strong expectations of fairness

Past attempts at similar reforms failed partly because they overlooked this reality. Solving it will not be easy. Yet another failure could leave Korean education mired in prolonged confusion, failing to achieve its central objective

The National Education Commission must therefore prepare thoroughly and conduct extensive public consultation to devise a system citizens can trust. Educational merit alone will not sustain reform. The government must demonstrate that new assessments can be graded consistently, transparently and accurately enough that students and parents accept the results

If it succeeds, future generations may judge this as one of the administration’s most important achievements in education

Source: www.koreajoongangdaily.com