The English section of this year’s Suneung was found to be the most difficult ever, with the share of top-grade earners dropping to half of last year’s level, data showed Thursday.
As the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation released the results for the exam held Nov. 13, only 15,154 of the total test-takers, or 3.11 percent, earned a first-grade score of 90 or higher, the lowest proportion since English shifted to an absolute grading system in 2018. This is lower than the 4 percent threshold used for Grade 1 under a relative grading system used for other subjects.
Last year, 6.22 percent of test-takers received the top grade in English.
The Korean section was also found to be difficult. The highest standardized score — a raw score adjusted to reflect the exam's difficulty and student's relative standing — rose to 147, up from last year's 139. The more difficult the exam, the higher the top standardized score tends to be.
Only five students — four current students and one graduate — earned perfect scores across all the subjects they took, fewer than half of last year’s total of 11.
Amid growing controversy over the test’s difficulty, KICE President Oh Seung-geol expressed regret that the English section proved more difficult than other subjects graded on a relative scale.
“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.”
shinjh@heraldcorp.com
