Exclusion of sick students from exams upsets parents

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Exclusion of sick students from exams upsets parents

People watch a Korean traditional music performance at Seoul Stage11 held at the SFAC Daehangno Center in central Seoul on Thursday. This was the first time Seoul Stage11 had an audience since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. [NEWS1]

People watch a Korean traditional music performance at Seoul Stage11 held at the SFAC Daehangno Center in central Seoul on Thursday. This was the first time Seoul Stage11 had an audience since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. [NEWS1]

 
With hundreds of thousands of middle and high school students scheduled to take midterm exams at the end of the month, many worry about contracting the coronavirus and not being able to take the tests.
 
The Ministry of Education reaffirmed its policy prohibiting students infected with Covid-19 from attending the exams, as it has throughout the pandemic.
 
“Under current public health measures, Covid-19 patients are subject to quarantine at home, and unlike other tests, school exams take place for three to five days, and large groups of students move around at once,” an education official said in a press briefing held Monday. “It is practically impossible for an infected student to take a face-to-face exam without a change in the virus measures.”
 
Covid-positive students will be given a special test grade that is based on his or her past exam record converted by a certain percentage depending on the average scores of the exams.
 
The Education Ministry said this is the way it has handled both midterm and final exams since 2020 following the Covid-19 outbreak. But the ministry’s ban on Covid-positive students is provoking a backlash this year among students and parents worried about university admissions.
 
“Even a 0.1 point difference in school grades can determine the level of a university a kid gets in,” said the mother of an 11th grader in Gyeonggi.
 
“[Amid the current virus wave] It cannot be seen as the individual student's fault for catching Covid-19. The government cannot take away a student’s right to take an exam for being sick.”
 
According to government data, from March 29 to April 4, 102,909 middle and high school students tested positive in Korea. This means an average of 14,701 students were infected every day.
 
Although the country’s virus wave is gradually subsiding, tens of thousands of students nationwide are expected to be banned from taking their midterm exams.
 
A petition was shared on the Blue House online petition board on March 14 demanding infected students be allowed to take the exams.
 
The petitioner, the parent of a high school student, wrote, "Covid-19 patients could even vote in the presidential election, so it is unfair for an infected student to not be allowed to take the tests,” adding, "Although schools give separate credits, a decline in [the overall] school records is clear if they miss a test.
 
“High school records mean a lot in students’ lives,” the parent wrote. “A lot of students may have to give up their hope of admission to a certain university because of that one test.” The petition received more than 14,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.
 
Some raised concerns that students could conceal their sickness to take the midterms.
 
Health authorities said they would support measures to enable Covid-infected middle and high school students take the mid-terms.
 
The Central Disease Control Headquarters said in a briefing Thursday that it “plans to actively support efforts if the education authorities come up with a test management plan for test-takers with Covid-19.”
 
“The national civil service exam has allowed Covid patients to take the test at a separate place after establishing its own plan, and other nationwide tests like the College Scholastic Ability Test [CSAT] have also been conducted this way,” Park Young-joon, head of the epidemiological investigation team at the Central Disease Control Headquarters, told reporters Thursday.
 
“If the ministry and offices of education come up with a test management operation plan for patients, and it is deemed that there is no risk of further contamination if a similar plan is applied to individual schools, we believe a consultation can be made,” Park said.
 
Korea’s daily Covid-19 tally remained in the 200,000s for the fourth straight day on Thursday with 224,820 cases, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
 
It was the first time in five weeks for a Thursday figure to come down below 300,000. Along with cases on Wednesdays, counts on Thursdays tend to surge as more tests are conducted after weekends.
 
However, critical cases and fatalities from Covid-19 were much higher than five weeks ago.
 
The number of Covid-19 patients in critical condition totaled 1,116 as of Wednesday midnight, staying above 1,100 for six days in a row.
 
There were 348 more virus-related deaths. Although people aged 60 or older accounted for the majority of 93.3 percent, one death was reported among the age group of under ten years old on Thursday.

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]
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