SEOUL– A court on Wednesday ruled that a bioscience question in this year’s college entrance exam had errors and ordered the state-run agency responsible for producing the test to cancel its designated answer.
The Seoul Administrative Court ruled in favor of 92 examinees disputing question No. 20 of the bioscience part 2 section of this year’s College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) developed by the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE).
The examinees argued the question centering around the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, a principle related to population genetics, was erroneous and launched a suit against KICE to rescind the agency’s designated answer.
The court ordered KICE to cancel the answer.
KICE insisted last month that the question, while not perfect, was valid, as it was meant to distinguish the level of learning among examinees.
Last week, the court ordered the agency to suspend the validity of the question until the suit was settled.
The court ruled that the flawed question essentially forced students to “choose an answer while neglecting principles of bioscience.”
Examinees who joined the lawsuit thanked the court for the ruling.
“We thought the adults would own up to their mistakes and correct what went wrong. I thank the court for the decision and plan to focus on the follow-up college admission process,” a person at the hearing said.
Following the ruling, KICE President Gahng Tae-joong issued an apology over the question controversy and offered to resign.
Gahng said KICE “will deeply contemplate” how this controversy transpired in the first place and come up with measures to reinvent itself.
Source: Yonhap News Agency