Secondary teachers union says essay-based CSAT deliberation 'not a social consensus' for 2037 introduction

The Secondary Teachers' Labor Union criticized the National Education Commission's deliberation results on introducing essay-type questions to the College Scholastic Ability Test, saying the outcome "should not be interpreted as a social consensus for introduction."

While the largest share of deliberation participants chose the 2037–2038 academic year as the preferred introduction window, that group fell short of a majority. The union said prerequisite conditions — including grading fairness and securing enough teachers and professional graders — must be addressed before any timeline is fixed.

The union issued a statement Friday saying the results "are closer to a call for careful judgment after fully establishing school conditions and fairness measures, not a demand to rush the introduction."

The union said support for introducing essay-type questions to the CSAT stood at 55.5 percent after the deliberation process — down 2.8 percentage points from before it began. Support fell particularly sharply among teachers, dropping 19.2 percentage points, and among parents, down 13.9 percentage points. The union also said the 39.4 percent who favored a 2037–2038 introduction — while the largest single group — fell short of a majority and therefore could not be read as a consensus on timing.

The union identified grading fairness as the central issue. "The problems of grading personnel and fairness will not resolve themselves just because 2037 arrives," it said, noting that grading fairness was the top concern raised throughout the deliberation. It also listed the difficulty of preparing for essay-type questions through school instruction alone, the potential for expanded private tutoring, and the logistical challenge of grading large volumes of answers in a short period as unresolved problems.

The union said expanding essay-type assessments in high school internal evaluations would also require advance preparation. Because disputes over accepted answers and partial credit could escalate into administrative appeals or lawsuits, it said standards to protect teachers' assessment authority and institutional response systems at the school and district level must be established first.

The union said introducing essay questions to the CSAT would require securing enough teachers and professional graders, as well as establishing multiple-grader review, public disclosure of grading criteria, and clear procedures and accountability for appeals. On AI-assisted grading, it said AI "is only a tool to assist grading and cannot be the party responsible for explaining the basis of scores or accountable for errors and appeals."

The union also raised concerns that expanding essay-type assessments could widen educational inequality between private tutoring and public schooling across regions. It argued that changing the assessment format alone — without addressing university rankings and labor market structures — could fuel demand for essay-writing and editing tutoring, and that differences in school and regional educational conditions could create new disparities in college admissions.

The union called on the National Education Commission to spell out implementation conditions and verification standards in its national education development plan — covering the securing of teachers and professional graders, multiple-grader review and appeals procedures, institutional responses to assessment complaints, and the scope of AI use — before locking in a specific introduction date.

Kim Hee-jeong, chairperson of the Secondary Teachers' Labor Union, said "the number 2037 does not recruit teachers or create grading fairness," adding that the deliberation results "should be read as a warning that sufficient preparation and verification are needed, not as a decision on when to introduce the system." She said the commission must first answer "not when to introduce it, but what conditions must be met — and how to defer implementation if those conditions are not met."