[2023 CSAT] Exam Chairperson: "Difficulty Weight Calculated to Match Repeater Ratio"

Last Year's Difficult Suneung and Over 30% Repeating Students as Variables
"Questions Set at a Level Solvable Without Private Education Help"
Review Procedures Strengthened After Last Year's 'Saengmyeonggwahak2' Question Errors

Park Yunbong, the chairperson of the 2023 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) question committee and a professor at Chungnam National University, briefly removed his mask during a briefing on the 2023 CSAT question direction at the Government Sejong Complex on the 17th. (Photo by Yonhap News)

[Asia Economy Reporter Han Jinju] The proportion of repeat test-takers and others surpassed 30% in the 2023 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), which is expected to affect the difficulty level as well.

At the 2023 CSAT question setting direction briefing held at the Government Complex Sejong on the 17th, Park Yunbong, Chair of the CSAT Question Setting Committee (Professor of Chemistry at Chungnam National University), said, "We are calculating difficulty weighting according to the proportion of graduates based on figures that appear during the analysis of the June and September mock exams."

Lee Gyumin, President of the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, explained, "We evaluate the proportion and performance level of repeat test-takers during the mock exams. We estimate the overall ability level of the test-taking group according to the proportion of repeat test-takers in the CSAT and set questions accordingly."

Lee added, "Differences in the proportion of top-grade (Grade 1) students arise due to a few questions that distinguish Grade 1, but I do not see a significant problem with the overall difficulty. Nevertheless, we are adjusting the difficulty as much as possible," and further explained, "We are not approaching this by setting the Grade 1 level as a fixed percentage."

Regarding this year’s CSAT difficulty, Lee said, "Difficulty is influenced not only by the ease or difficulty of test items but also by the ability level of the test-taking group that year. We gauged the level of this year’s examinee group and set the question direction to minimize differences in averages and average raw scores and standard scores among subjects as much as possible."

Regarding last year’s 'bul-suneung' (extremely difficult CSAT) which caused dissatisfaction among examinees, Chair Park said, "We tried to set questions at a level that students who have faithfully completed school education can solve without private tutoring," and explained, "I believe the reduced proportion of EBS-linked questions had a significant impact on the 'bul-suneung.' This year, we made great efforts to increase the perceived linkage to allow easier access to questions."

The issue of 'advantage and disadvantage by elective subjects' continues to be raised, as scores vary depending on the choice of Korean and math elective subjects. In Korean, students taking Language and Media, and in math, those taking Calculus and Geometry, continue to have higher standard scores.

The Institute standardizes elective subject scores through the average scores of common subjects obtained by each group to correct for this advantage and disadvantage. In other words, the higher the average raw score in common subjects, the higher the adjusted standard score. Since the average raw score in common subjects for Calculus, mainly taken by science students, is higher than that for Probability and Statistics, mainly taken by humanities students, differences appear in the standard scores as well.

President Lee said, "If we do not adjust for difficulty differences among elective subjects as we currently do, students choosing easier subjects would have an advantage. This could lead to a concentration of examinees in easier subjects," and added, "It is difficult to completely overcome the advantage and disadvantage issue when all elective subjects are scored as one domain score, as is currently done in Korean and math."

This year, the Institute extended the question setting period and reinforced the error review process to prevent errors in CSAT question setting.

President Lee explained, "First, we extended the total question setting period by two days and added a special inspection procedure for high-difficulty questions, recognizing the high possibility of errors in such questions," and added, "There is a possibility that questions that were settled early might be omitted during the review process, so we included an additional review process to strengthen the overall review."