A dirty cartel of collusion in education

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) probe into a “cartel” between public and private educators found that some of their collusive deals resembled criminal organizations. The government watchdog filed requests with law enforcement authorities for criminal investigations on 56 people, including 27 teachers.

The accused teachers hid their shady relationship with private cram schools when they were recruited to set exam questions for the state-administered College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and textbooks of public broadcaster EBS. Some of the teachers created groups to borrow their expertise in setting questions for the CSAT or state-administered mock tests and EBS textbooks to supply textbooks they can sell to cram schools.

The BAI discovered several of these groups. As many as 35 teachers took part in a big group, sharing income of nearly 2 billion won ($1.5 million). They used various criminal means of using borrowed bank accounts or money laundering through publishers under the name of their spouses. Some stole an EBS textbook before it was published, and included the same questions they sold to cram schools in their school tests.

The collusive network among educators was epitomized by question 23 in the English section of the CSAT of 2023. The question used an excerpt from a Harvard Law School professor’s book, “Too Much Information,” which was not published in Korea. But the question appeared in a mock test of a cram school teacher shortly before the CSAT was taken.

Private academies and their lectures have built huge wealth through their dubious deals with school teachers. Students score high with preliminary access to the questions that will appear in school tests. They rush to the cram schools and teachers who can provide them. The Ministry of Education and the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE ), which must supervise teachers, are suspected of turning a blind eye to them or even colluding with some of them. Although many filed complaints about the CSAT English question, the KICE left out the question in their meetings over controversial questions, which may not be a coincidence.

The Education Ministry from the beginning of this year issued a guideline barring any trade of exam questions between teachers and cram schools. But whether the ban will end the suspicious practice is uncertain. The ministry also promised strict control when a similar case appeared in 2016. Trading exam questions between test-makers and private academies is certainly a social ill that must be stopped. A simple guideline cannot be enough as it cannot penalize the buyers from private academies. Education authorities must propose a law to outlaw such dirty practices.