By Bae Ji-sook
Staff reporter
Dozens of teachers are suspected of having assisted their students achieve higher scores in the disputed standardized tests in North Chungcheong Province.
A liberal teachers’ union said it has received tip-offs on more than 30 cases of cheating at schools in the province during the state-run uniform tests for elementary and secondary school students on July 13 and 14.
It asked the educational authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations.
The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU) said its regional branch received 30 reports of cheating, mostly conducted by teachers’ “inducing” students to revise wrong answers into correct ones and tacitly encouraging students to look at their peers’ test papers.
Some of the accusations lacked grounds, while more than 10 cases were “highly suspicious,” officials from the union said.
According to their report, some teachers who were in the classrooms as auditors, whispered to students with wrong answers to “think carefully again,” hinting to them that the answers were incorrect. They sometimes wrote the correct answer on the test sheets.
North Chungcheong Province posted the worst test results among 16 metropolitan or provincial educational administrations.
Headmasters of underachieving schools have reportedly been called into superintendants’ offices and were scolded over the poor ratings. They were threatened with demotion and were under severe stress over the outcome.
Another popular form of irregularities was to manipulate the seating of students, placing students with lower scores next to those who perform better, and ignored the formers’ looking at the latter’s answer sheets.
Three students at an elementary school in Jecheon reported to the provincial educational office that their teachers handpicked answers for them at examination time late last week.
The KTU also claimed that teachers in the region have skipped the regular curriculum to drive their students to pay more attention on the test.
“About three months ahead of the exam, all students were forced to come to school early and leave late for special training,” a union official said.
An official at the provincial office said Sunday that the staff will conduct in-depth investigations into the allegations.