Promotion of Retake for Unresponsive Academic Achievement Assessment... Autonomous Evaluation on the 13th Also Uncertain

Re-selection of Sample Schools and Possible Retest as Early as October

The computer-based academic achievement assessment, which the Ministry of Education attempted for the first time this year, was halted due to connection failures. The Ministry plans to recalculate the sample schools and conduct a retest as early as October.

On the 7th, the Ministry of Education and the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation conducted the 2022 national-level academic achievement sample assessment for 10,323 second-year high school students from 212 schools, but connection failures occurred starting from the first period Korean language subject. Although optimization codes were added last month to enhance the safety of individual student test administration, these caused system stability issues. Since some students had already taken the test, the Ministry decided to create new questions and reselect the target schools.

An official from the Ministry of Education explained, "We will redevelop the assessment tools and reconsider the sample schools by taking into account final exams and performance evaluation schedules. We will not rush to conduct the test in September but will reschedule it."

The academic achievement assessment targets 3% of all students in the third year of middle school and second year of high school to gauge academic achievement levels. It is conducted annually to review educational outcomes and secure basic data for education policy formulation. Although it was implemented via computer-based testing for the first time this year, the system failure caused a suspension. For third-year middle school students, the assessment was planned for the 6th but was postponed due to the impact of a typhoon.

The Ministry of Education and the Institute plan to proceed normally with the computer-based "Customized Academic Achievement Voluntary Assessment," which allows schools wishing to participate to do so voluntarily starting from the 13th. The "Customized Academic Achievement Voluntary Assessment" is conducted for sixth-grade elementary, third-year middle, and second-year high school students, and the test results can be checked by the class teacher, participating students, and parents. For the voluntary assessment, up to 15,000 users can connect simultaneously. Given that connection failures occurred during a test with 10,000 simultaneous users the previous day, concerns about recurrence have been raised. Regarding this, a Ministry official stated, "The optimization code was fully restored last night, and this connection failure is unrelated to server capacity."

Unlike the sample-based academic achievement assessment, the customized achievement assessment allows voluntary participation; however, the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education announced plans to conduct it for all students, which is expected to continue the controversy.

The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union criticized, "The attempt to expand the academic achievement assessment, which emphasizes diagnosis alone and is misleadingly promoted as a panacea for guaranteeing basic academic skills, must be stopped. Although it is a voluntary assessment, the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education, which arbitrarily enforces universal implementation, should learn from today's disaster and reconsider related policies."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.