Public Education Commission Split Over Introducing Essay and Written-Response Questions to College Entrance Exam

As the National Education Commission, a presidential advisory body, moves forward with public deliberation on whether to introduce written-response and essay-based assessments to the college entrance exam, public opinion remains sharply divided, with 55.5% in favor and 41.7% opposed. Why did approval rates among parents and teachers decline the longer the deliberation went on?

According to a two-day deliberation conducted by the National Education Commission from August 29 with 180 citizen participants including high school students, parents, and teachers, 55.5% said the exam should combine multiple-choice questions with written and essay responses, while 41.7% said it was unnecessary. Notably, 73.1% of primary and secondary school teachers agreed on the need for the combined format before deliberation, but that figure dropped 19.2 percentage points to 53.8% afterward. Parental support also fell from 63.9% to 50.0%.

At a presidential briefing on August 5, Cha Jung-in, chairwoman of the commission, said, "The current testing system forces students into endless repetitive drilling of multiple-choice questions right up until they enter higher education," adding that "it fails to develop critical thinking or creativity, and does not prepare students for higher education." President Lee Jae-myung responded that it amounted to "practicing to become a low-level computer," while adding, "This isn't about ordering a change — the idea is to think about it together."

Lee Sang-min, a math teacher at Hyun High School who serves on the commission's expert committee for mid- to long-term national education development, attributed the post-deliberation drop in support to "the fact that the commission is pushing to change the assessment format too quickly without putting the necessary conditions in place." He pointed out, "Teachers who write the questions disagree with one another, and students' answers vary so widely that grading cannot be completed in three or four days." He added, "Not all classes can take school-based performance assessments at the same time, so the questions differ by class, and parents raise concerns that these differences translate into differences in difficulty." He stressed, "Curriculum changes, textbook revisions, and teacher staffing are all necessary. Without those prerequisites, expanding written and essay formats in school grades and introducing them into the entrance exam will only fuel the private education market."

There are teachers who support the change, however. Park Si-young, a teacher at Misa High School, said, "Teachers are not unfamiliar with or incapable of written and essay assessments, since performance assessments already include them," adding, "We need to expand these formats in school grades first, eliminate relative grading, and then move the entrance exam to an absolute grading system." Kim Yong-ju, a former middle school social studies teacher, said, "Expanding written and essay formats and reflecting them in the entrance exam would create an atmosphere in which students try to think more deeply overall," adding, "Children of parents with higher socioeconomic status already achieve higher grades, so these formats won't be fairly criticized for creating that situation." He added, "With multiple choice, teachers cannot know what students don't understand, but with written and essay responses, teachers can read students' writing, judge it, give feedback, and deliver higher-quality instruction."

Written and essay formats currently account for 20–40% of school grades, depending on the metropolitan province or city. The National Education Commission will decide whether to expand their use in school grades and adopt them in the entrance exam after its deliberation and public consultation process.