South Korea Overhauls Suneung English Exam After Record Low Top Grades

Only 3.11 Percent Reached the Highest English Grade

South Korea is changing how it prepares the English section of its national university entrance examination after just 3.11 percent of the 630,000 students who took the November 2025 test received Level 1, the highest grade. Roughly 7 percent had been expected to reach that level under a grading system intended to reduce student stress and spending on private education.

The result triggered a government investigation, the resignation of the country's chief examination administrator and renewed demand for private tutoring. For students seeking admission to leading universities, an unexpectedly low English grade could mean missing a minimum entry requirement even when their other results were strong.

The College Scholastic Ability Test, commonly called the Suneung, sits at the centre of this dispute. English has used absolute grading since 2018. Under that approach, students receive grades according to fixed standards rather than their position compared with other candidates. The aim was to make a top grade achievable through mastery of the public school curriculum, without an endless contest for a limited number of places at the top.

The November results exposed weaknesses in controlling examination difficulty. A Ministry of Education investigation conducted throughout December 2025 found extensive revisions near the end of preparation, too few practising teachers among English question writers and inadequate checks on the expertise of people selected to write questions.

Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin has announced changes to staffing, review procedures and facilities. As of February 13, 2026, the response also includes plans to test artificial intelligence for producing English passages, while a separate proposal from Seoul's education superintendent would eventually abolish the Suneung.

Why a Lower English Grade Changed Admission Prospects

Students who had prepared according to official guidelines found that their English results could close off routes to early admission at leading universities. Minimum grade requirements mean that doing well in other subjects may still leave a candidate ineligible for a particular admission track.

Kim Joo-hyung, deputy head of Gwangju Daeseong D-Quantum academy, said even students who had been performing at the top unexpectedly received lower English grades and failed to meet minimum admission requirements. Consultation calls began as soon as score reports were released, he said.

Parents also turned to online communities, including DSchool, to ask which private academies could help protect their children's university prospects. One mother was considering additional English classes for her daughter in 11th grade after concentrating mainly on mathematics and science. Another parent said the results showed that English could not be overlooked when choosing private academies.

Private academies, known as hagwons, reported a surge in enrolment inquiries within hours of the score release. That reaction threatened years of government efforts to reduce reliance on paid tutoring. South Korea's spending on private education reached approximately 26 trillion won, about $19 billion, in 2024.

Oh Seung-geol, president of the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE), resigned on December 10, 2025, accepting responsibility for the failure to control difficulty. His departure was unusual even for an institution whose leaders have frequently left before completing their terms.

Of the 12 previous agency chiefs, only four completed their full terms of three years. Most departures followed errors in individual questions. Oh was the first to step down because an examination was judged too difficult, making the handling of difficulty itself the central issue.

What Went Wrong During the Final Revisions?

The Ministry of Education announced its investigation findings on February 11, 2026. Its most striking finding was that 19 English questions were completely rewritten shortly before the examination. By comparison, the Korean language section had one rewritten question and mathematics had four.

The English revisions left reviewers with insufficient time to judge whether the replacement questions matched the public school curriculum and maintained an appropriate level of difficulty. A question can be suitable in subject matter yet still be unusually demanding because of its wording, reasoning or answer choices.

The ministry's explanation of the review process said that all 19 replacement questions received evaluations, but that the time needed for those evaluations affected the checks on difficulty:

When a question is written, there is a process in which reviewers submit their evaluations, but that did not occur smoothly. All 19 questions did go through reviewer evaluation, but because that process takes time, it appears to have affected difficulty checks.

The findings put the timing and coordination of reviews at the centre of the problem. Replacing so many questions late in preparation compressed the period available to assess how demanding the completed English section would be for students.

Oh acknowledged that the rise in difficulty was partly linked to hurried replacements of questions considered too similar to commercial mock examinations. That requirement tied two concerns together: preventing overlap with private tutoring materials and keeping the final test within the intended difficulty range.

Too Few Classroom Teachers and a Strained Working Process

Only 33 percent of the English question writers were active teachers working in schools, compared with an average of 45 percent across all examination sections. University professors and outside experts made up the rest of the English committee.

Critics argued that this balance left question writing too far removed from everyday classroom instruction. Teachers regularly see which parts of the curriculum students understand and which tasks cause difficulty. The reforms seek to give that classroom experience a larger place in preparing the test.

Since 2024, writers have been randomly selected from a talent pool. The ministry found that checks on their expertise after selection were inadequate. Selecting people from a pool therefore still required a stronger process for confirming their suitability for the work.

Question writers also spend approximately 40 days isolated in private accommodation facilities to prevent leaks. The security arrangement makes it difficult to maintain a stable working environment during an extended and demanding period of preparation.

Existing protocols restrict the use of artificial intelligence tools. Writers consequently rely on manual methods to check similarities between questions and predict difficulty. Those tasks become especially pressing when a question must be replaced near the end of the preparation period.

The staffing findings, isolation arrangements and limits on available tools describe different pressures on the same process. Writers must keep questions secure, avoid overlap with existing materials and produce a test that reflects classroom learning, all while leaving enough time for reviewers to examine the final version.

How Removing Killer Questions Changed the Test

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered the exclusion of so-called killer questions in June 2023. These exceptionally difficult items had long been a feature of the Suneung, with some proving challenging even for university professors working within the time limit.

Such questions had correct answer rates below 20 percent and effectively functioned as statistical guesses. They also served a political purpose in a country where university rankings shape opportunities for social mobility: the examination was expected to separate students competing for the most sought-after places.

Removing the hardest questions did not remove the pressure to distinguish the strongest candidates, particularly for medical school admission. Writers instead developed what insiders call questions of secondary difficulty. These were somewhat easier than traditional killer questions, but used twisted logic, wordplay and tempting wrong answers that could catch well-prepared students.

Sung Ki-sun, a professor at the Catholic University of Korea and KICE president from 2017 to 2021, described the response as a balloon effect. Pressure reduced in one part of the test reappeared elsewhere because the committee still had to maintain the examination's difficulty.

Sung explained that the number of highly difficult questions increased from around seven to 12 or 13, even as questions of extreme difficulty disappeared. The 2024 examination, the first after Yoon's order, became one of the most difficult on record, with only one perfect scorer nationwide.

English presents an additional tension because its absolute grading system was designed to reduce competition over rank. Other subjects use a system of relative grading with nine tiers, where students compete against one another for limited places in the highest grades. English was supposed to offer a more predictable target based on learning the curriculum.

Why Public Workbooks Can Lead to More Complicated Questions

The state educational broadcaster EBS supplies workbooks intended to align with the examination. Those materials connect preparation to public education resources, but they also create a challenge for the people writing English questions.

Writers substantially change passages drawn from EBS materials so that students who memorise the workbooks cannot identify answers too easily. The resulting questions can become increasingly convoluted, even though the passages began with resources meant to support accessible preparation.

The committee must also review 400 to 500 commercial workbooks used by cram schools to make sure its questions do not overlap with private academy materials. When a similarity is found, the question must be discarded and replaced, sometimes at the last minute.

These requirements help explain how late revisions can multiply. A writer may produce a question linked to public learning materials, alter it to avoid an obvious memorised answer, and then replace it because it resembles something in a commercial workbook. Every replacement creates another question that needs a difficulty assessment.

Oh's explanation of the November 2025 English results connected this process directly to the crisis. Rushing to replace questions similar to commercial mock tests contributed to the increase in difficulty, while the ministry's investigation found that the volume of changes strained the final reviews.

The Unequal Cost for Students Outside Seoul

One high school in South Jeolla Province reported that none of its 74 students achieved Level 1 in English. The result effectively shut those students out of early admission tracks at prestigious universities that required the highest grade.

Rural areas have more limited access to elite private tutoring than Seoul. An unexpectedly difficult examination therefore placed particular pressure on families whose children had fewer opportunities to obtain additional preparation.

Officials from the Gwangju Metropolitan Education Office warned that the purpose of absolute grading was to give students a fairer opportunity through public schooling. Their warning linked the admission consequences to the strength of education available in classrooms:

The purpose of the absolute grading scale is to allow students to prepare for college entrance with public education alone. If we do not strengthen public education, students in rural areas will be at a disadvantage.

The return to hagwons illustrates the tension in the 2018 reform. A grading system introduced to reduce tutoring costs instead encouraged families to seek more paid preparation when the highest English grade became much harder to obtain than expected.

The gap between Seoul and the provinces makes that response uneven. Affluent families in the capital have greater access to private instruction, while students in rural communities depend more heavily on the public education that absolute grading was intended to support.

What the Government Plans to Change

Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin's overhaul begins with the people writing the questions. Starting with the next examination cycle, at least half of English question writers must be active teachers, raising the required classroom representation from the 33 percent found in the investigation.

The ministry will also combine fragmented review bodies into integrated Question Review Committees for each subject. Questions currently pass through five to six levels of review. The new structure is intended to make the process more coordinated and support reliable checks on difficulty.

Choi, the minister responsible for the reforms, described the intended outcome as restoring confidence in an examination that students can prepare for through public education:

Stable test setting is essential to building trust in the college admissions system. Through these improvements, we aim to create a predictable and trustworthy Suneung system so that students who put in the effort within public education can be evaluated fairly.

Artificial intelligence is planned to take on a larger role. The ministry intends to pilot a system for generating English passages in the 2028 mock examination, with the aim of reducing development time and avoiding copyright issues. Eventually, AI is expected to help predict difficulty and check similarities between questions.

A dedicated facility, tentatively named the Education Assessment and Test Development Support Center, is scheduled to open by 2030. It would replace the temporary private accommodation arrangements used for the lengthy, isolated question writing process.

The sequence of events and announced milestones is:

• June 2023: Yoon Suk Yeol ordered the exclusion of killer questions.
• November 2025: Only 3.11 percent of Suneung candidates achieved Level 1 in English.
• December 10, 2025: Oh Seung-geol resigned as KICE president.
• December 2025: The Ministry of Education investigated the preparation process.
• February 11, 2026: The ministry announced its findings.
• Next examination cycle: Active teachers must make up at least half of English question writers.
• 2028 mock examination: The ministry plans to test AI generation of English passages.
• By 2030: The dedicated assessment and test development facility is scheduled to open.

A Separate Proposal Would End the Suneung by 2040

Seoul Metropolitan Education Office Superintendent Jung Geun-sik has proposed a broader change: abolishing the Suneung by 2040 and replacing its central role in admission with evaluations of student records and assessments based on essays.

Jung's proposal has three stages. It would expand absolute grading to all subjects by 2028, introduce more essay questions by 2033 and eventually remove the standardised examination as the primary admission criterion. This is a separate proposal from the ministry's announced changes to question writing and review.

The proposal reflects an expected demographic shift. By 2040, South Korea's population of students of high school age is projected to shrink by half, reducing the need for an examination that sorts large numbers of candidates competing for university places.

It also addresses questions about multiple choice assessments in an era when artificial intelligence can achieve Level 1 mathematics scores within 15 minutes. Evaluations based on essays and student records would change the kinds of work used to judge candidates.

The ministry's technical reforms target the weaknesses identified in the November examination. The broader pressure to distinguish applicants for elite universities remains part of the admissions system, while families are still responding to that pressure through private education. Whether the changes will reduce that dependence has not yet been decided by their results.

For students preparing for the next Suneung, the immediate issue is whether the new staffing and review rules can deliver a fairer, more predictable English examination. The November crisis showed how an unexpected change in difficulty could affect admissions, family spending and the gap between students with different levels of access to tutoring.

Key Points

• Only 3.11 percent of 630,000 candidates achieved Level 1 in English in November 2025, against an expected rate of roughly 7 percent.
• The ministry found that 19 English questions were completely rewritten late in preparation, compared with one in Korean and four in mathematics.
• Active teachers made up 33 percent of English question writers. The next cycle will require at least 50 percent.
• KICE president Oh Seung-geol resigned on December 10, 2025, over the failure to control examination difficulty.
• Unexpectedly low English grades disrupted admission prospects and drove renewed demand for private academies.
• The ministry plans an AI passage generation pilot in the 2028 mock examination and a dedicated facility by 2030.
• Jung Geun-sik's separate proposal would expand absolute grading by 2028, add more essay questions by 2033 and abolish the Suneung by 2040.