By Yi Whan-woo
The Ministry of Personnel Management may exclude the requirement to submit scores from the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) from applications for public servant posts, officials of the ministry said Sunday.
“We’ve asked the test administrators to come up with measures after it was found that a public servant exam taker exploited loopholes in TOEIC test regulations and cheated on tests,” a ministry official said. “If the measures are insufficient, we will consider excluding TOEIC scores from job requirements for public servants.”
The official said the case threw the credibility of TOEIC scores into serious doubt.
“We can’t recognize the job competency of TOEIC test takers based on their scores since it has been apparent that TOEIC tests have been administered in a loose and lax manner,” said the official.
“We cannot keep using TOEIC scores as one of the standards for job competence unless its credulity is guaranteed.”
The ministry said it asked YBM, a Seoul-based English-language-learning institution and administrator of the TOEIC tests, to improve its supervision of test takers and come up with necessary measures.
Developed by U.S-based Educational Testing Service (ETS), TOEIC has been widely acknowledged by the government, state-run companies and private enterprises for assessing the English skills of jobseekers as part of employment applications.
Concerns have grown over the government’s assessment standards of aspirant bureaucrats after a 26-year-old male jobseeker was caught in late March allegedly attempting to forge his civil service test scores while cheating on his TOEIC tests.
The suspect had applied for the government’s annual recruitment of lower-level position jobs.
Police said the suspect, identified by his last name Song, infiltrated the government complex in downtown Seoul and accessed computers belonging to ministry authorities who oversee employment matters, to change his test scores after learning he failed, said investigators.
Song also confessed during the interrogation that he faked seeing problems during two TOEIC tests in February 2015 to receive extra time on the reading and comprehension (R/C) section. Test takers with weak vision are given 15 minutes extra time under TOEIC regulations.
TOEIC is comprised of two sections ― listening and R/C.
Each section accounts for half or 495 points out of an overall 990 points.
In 2014, Song scored below 700, which is the minimum required to land a lower-level job offered by the government.
He then acquired over 700 in the 2015 tests, investigators said.
TOEIC scores are valid for two years after the test date.
Government officials rejected speculations that the possible exclusion of TOEIC scores may stir up confusion among applicants for civil service jobs in the future.
“We’re awaiting a response from TOEIC-related officials and it’s too early to predict what the next step will be,” an official said.