Questions remain over billions blown on NEAT

Unsold stock of the NEAT books at Youngpoong Bookstore in Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Chung Hyun-chae

Teachers call for probe over scrapping of English test

By Jung Min-ho, Jung Sung-eun

Teachers, students and parents have criticized the Ministry of Education for wasting taxpayer’s money on the development of a new college entrance English language test that has now been scrapped.

Discontent surfaced late last year after the Park Geun-hye administration backpedaled on the previous government’s initiative to create the National English Ability Test (NEAT) to reduce the nation’s heavy reliance on widely used English tests such as TOEFL and TOEIC.

The Lee Myung-bak administration intended to replace the English section of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) with NEAT from 2016.

But, the education ministry has decided to abolish this plan and maintain the current CSAT English test, citing concerns that the new test could cause a further rise in private tuition costs. However, it has allowed NEAT to be administered to adults, including college students.

Now, a group of middle and high school teachers are trying to find who is responsible for wasting 42.5 billion won ($41 million) of taxpayer’s money by a sudden change in policy regarding the English test after the new government came to power.

“The sudden policy change has left many teachers, students and their parents at a loss as to what to do,” Lee Seong-gueon, leader of the Teachers Solidarity for Educational Policy, told The Korea Times. He is a counseling teacher at Daejin High School in Seoul.

Students get ready to take the National English Ability Test (NEAT) at Gyeonggi Girls’ Commercial High School in Seoul in this June 2, 2013, file photo. With NEAT gone, students continue to take the English section of the College Scholastic Ability Test, which does not evaluate test-takers’ speaking and writing abilities. / Yonhap

He and other teachers said they will raise the issue with the Board of Audit and Inspection after collecting 100,000 signatures to request a special investigation by the state agency to discover who should be held accountable for the policy flop.

Many people had high expectations that NEAT would end the CSAT English test, which has long been blamed for not properly evaluating the speaking and writing abilities of students.

The aim of introducing NEAT was to help schoolchildren improve their English proficiency. But under the Lee administration, policymakers recklessly pressed ahead with the new test plan without making preparations for it to be implemented.

Critics point out that the NEAT formula was doomed to fail from the start because few teachers were prepared to teach speaking and writing.

“The failure was evident from the start,” said a high school English teacher surnamed Lim. “Many teachers were not ready for NEAT … They were not trained to teach speaking and writing.”

Noting that training school teachers usually takes time and effort, she said no one was sure if NEAT could be successful in such a short period of time.

She maintained that many teachers did not want to see the CSAT English section replaced by the new test especially because they were already burdened with heavy teaching loads and other daily tasks.

“They were too busy to get ready for NEAT,” Lim said. “The introduction of NEAT would mean an additional burden for teachers.”

Kim Tai-hyun, an English teacher at Yonghwa Girls’ High School in northern Seoul, also believes that policymakers failed to take the working conditions of teachers into account when they decided to set up NEAT.

“If you think about giving a speaking class in a classroom packed with 30 to 40 students, it is almost impossible to allow everyone to engage in conversation to improve their communicative skills,” Kim said.

Also at stake is whether or not teachers can fairly and objectively evaluate students’ speaking and writing skills.

In fact, a considerable number of students and their parents question the evaluation standards and methods used by teachers.

But the problem does not stop there. Some cram schools complain that they have also fallen prey to the bungled policy on NEAT.

Private English institutes spent large sums of money on developing teaching programs for NEAT in the knowledge that schools were not properly prepared to train English teachers about the new test.

But they suffered significant losses because the test was scrapped.

“The education authorities were totally unprepared for the test; there were no guidelines on how to get the ball rolling,” said Lee, the owner of an English writing institute in Seongnam, south of Seoul.

“Only about two months after the plan was announced, I started to question if it could be implemented smoothly,” he added.

‘CSAT English is even worse’

Adding to frustrations is a consensus that the CSAT English test is also full of problems.

Many people still think that the current test is even worse than NEAT when it comes to assessing a student’s English proficiency.

Rick S. Ramirez, who has taught English in Korea for six years, said he sees “serious flaws” in the CSAT English.

“The English education system here is greatly flawed,” Ramirez said. “The fact that students begin to learn English from third grade in elementary school (some as early as first grade), and still don’t have strong English-language skills by the time they enter university astounds me.”

According to Statistics Korea, private tutoring costs for English learning among schoolchildren stood at 6.5 trillion won in 2012, higher than any other subject.

“Parents spend a huge sum on private tutoring for their children, and still the vast majority of students are not proficient in English … Considering the money and time invested, it proves the system is failing,” he said. “Rote memorization is king here in Korea, but it doesn’t really work for a language.”

“I feel like the way that English is taught doesn’t provide the best opportunities for English proficiency to all Korean citizens,” he said.

Kim, the Yonghwa Girls’ High School teacher, also believes the CSAT is just a system that ranks students based on anything but their English.

However, an education ministry official said it has no plan to revamp the CSAT English testing system. This means that schoolchildren will continue to be deprived of their right to have a proper education to gain a better command of English.