Ministry of Education asks police to take on CSAT collusion cases

The Ministry of Education said Monday it requested police investigations into two cases of alleged collusion between private education businesses and College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) exam writers.

Vice Education Minister Jang Sang-yoon, right, speaks during a briefing on cracking down on irregularities involving private academies at the Sejong government complex Monday. [YONHAP]

The Ministry of Education said Monday it requested police investigations into two cases of alleged collusion between private education businesses and College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) exam writers.

The Education Ministry asked the National Police Agency to investigate these cases after receiving 261 reports regarding irregularities related to so-called private education cartels between June 22 and Sunday.

It also requested the Fair Trade Commission to investigate another 10 cases involving large private academies that allegedly falsely or exaggeratedly publicized students' CSAT exam results or had publishers that overtly featured authors who were former members of test-making committees.

Vice Education Minister Jang Sang-yoon said in a briefing that the suspected collusion cases being investigated by police include one where a private academy instructor met with a person in charge of the CSATs and leaked the types of expected exam problems to students.

The police investigation is expected to focus on whether the exam's contents were actually leaked via the academy instructor, and whether cash or valuables were exchanged during the process. It is expected that the investigation will also focus on whether the member of the test-making committee excessively publicized the exam writing experience in violation of the law.

The reports to the ministry included 46 cases of suspected collusion between private academies and CSAT test makers, 37 false or exaggerated advertisements by private education businesses, 29 excessive tuition fees and 28 coerced purchases of supplementary material.

This comes as the Yoon Suk Yeol administration has been working on measures to reduce reliance on private education, such as hagwon (cram schools), including removing super difficult "killer" questions from the CSATs. This is in response to criticism that the college-determining CSAT includes unnecessarily difficult questions not covered under public education that students cannot solve without resorting to private lessons.

The Education Ministry in turn called for eradicating the so-called "private education cartels," referring to a systemic practice in which some extremely difficult CSAT questions are crafted by former test makers, who are then hired by private academies as teachers so the academies can charge extravagant tuition fees.

Last week, the National Tax Service launched a special probe on Megastudy, a large cram school chain specializing in entrance exams and boasting elite instructors.

The CSAT is administered nationwide by the state-run Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation in November.

In response to growing concerns among students and their parents with some 130 days left till this year's CSATs, Jang said in the briefing, "This has nothing to do with the test takers or their parents," assuring them "there will be no disruptions in preparations for the exam."

Also on Monday, Yoon ordered his newly appointed vice ministers to "fight fiercely against cartels with a vested interest," stressing that "our government is an anti-cartel government."

Yoon made the remarks after a ceremony appointing 13 vice ministers who were named in a government reshuffle last week, according to Lee Do-woon, the presidential spokesman, in a statement.

"Totalitarianism and socialism destroy a democratic society from the outside, and corrupt cartels from the inside," Yoon was quoted as saying during a luncheon meeting with the new vice ministers.

This comes as the Yoon administration has been cracking down on mismanagements of various civic groups, institutions, labor unions and most recently the private education system.

Yoon also asked his new vice ministers to "always accurately evaluate the performance of public officials and affiliated organizations."

BY SARAH KIM [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]