By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff reporter
College entrance exam results are lower in high schools with a higher number of teachers affiliated to a liberal teachers' union, a lawmaker said Wednesday.
Rep. Chung Doo-un of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) released the analysis in an effort to illustrate a correlation between poor academic performance and a high proportion of teachers belonging to the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union (KTU).
The data show that the rate of students achieving Grade 1 or 2 in the 2009 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) was on average 9 percent in high schools where KTU teachers accounted for more than 40 percent of the total teaching staff.
Results were noticeably higher in schools where KTU members were less than 5 percent, with the rate standing at 14.8 percent.
Similarly, the proportion of those attaining Grade 1 or 2 in the foreign language section of the test reached 15 percent in schools where KTU members accounted for less than 5 percent of the total number of teachers.
The rate of those achieving the two highest grades in this section was much lower _ 8.5 percent _ in schools where KTU members were tallied at above 40 percent.
The trend continued in results for the Korean language and math sections. The proportion of top students marked 14.5 and 14.8 percent respectively, in schools where union members accounted for less than 5 percent of the total number of teachers, compared to 9.9 and 8.7 percent respectively, in schools, in which the KTU members were above 40 percent.
``The figures support the claim that the more KTU teachers there are, the worse the CSAT scores are of their students,'' Chung said.
He underlined that the list of KTU members should be made public as parents have a right to know the political affiliation of their children's teachers, which appears to have an effect on students' academic performance.
Chung is one of 10 GNP legislators who recently posted a list of KTU members on their Web sites despite a recent court ruling against fellow GNP lawmaker Cho Jeon-hyeok.
On March 27, the court ordered Cho to pull the list or pay 30 million won ($27,000) to the union for each day it remained public.
Cho removed the names Wednesday night, saying he could no longer afford to pay the growing penalty.