The organizer of the U.S. Scholastic Aptitude Test canceled the college admission exam for Koreans scheduled for Saturday amid an investigation into a leak of exam questions.The College Board, which oversees the SAT, notified Korean applicants on Wednesday of the cancellation via email. The SAT is currently offered several times a year in more than 170 countries. The prosecution has been investigating more than eight private institutes since February over allegations that they leaked exam questi

President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday ordered a thorough overhaul of school textbooks to make them more explanatory and easier to understand, reaffirming her commitment that questions in college entrance and other exams should not go beyond the levels of school texts.“Textbooks must improve further if we are going to keep the principle that nothing outside textbooks will appear in tests,” Park said during a Cabinet meeting, referring to one of her campaign pledges on education issues ahead of last

The education ministry said Monday it plans to match the class sizes of primary and secondary schools to international standards by 2020 in an effort to provide a better educational environment.Under the plan, the class size of primary schools will be cut to an average of 21 students per class by 2020 from last year's 24.3. The average number will be reduced to 23 from 32.4 at middle schools, with the number to be lowered to 23 from 32.5 for high schools.The goals are designed to be in line with

More than 7 out of 10 primary and secondary school students in Seoul participated in private education and other extracurricular activities last year, with a majority of their parents feeling the pinch of high education costs, data showed Thursday.According to the data compiled by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, 73.5 percent of the city’s primary, middle and high school students received supplementary education services in 2012, with their monthly expenditure averaging 425,000 won ($388).Some

An overwhelming majority of professors in South Korea turn a blind eye to plagiarism, a poll showed Wednesday, highlighting their indifference to the problem facing local academia.The email survey of 600 college professors showed that 86.3 percent of the respondents either criticize colleagues’ plagiarism privately or just wink at the practice.Nearly 41 percent replied that plagiarism is a serious problem, with the remainder saying it is minor or not so grave, according to the survey by the Kyos

The government on Tuesday announced measures to reinforce Korean language education for children of multicultural families and to expand support for foreign wives as part of efforts to help them better assimilate into Korean society.The latest move comes as increasing numbers of Korean men are marrying foreign wives, and migrant workers continue to settle here for employment opportunities.Under the envisioned comprehensive action plans for this year with a budget of 93.3 billion won ($83.6 milli

The municipal education office here has taken steps to nullify a controversial ordinance to protect the human rights of students, its officials said Wednesday. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education led by conservative Superintendent Moon Yong-lin recently withdrew two cases of lawsuits it had filed with the highest court in opposition to the education ministry’s ban on schools’ enforcement of the rules. Aimed at expanding students’ rights at school, the student human rights ordinance bans c

Korean universities have taken three of the top 10 places in a recent ranking of Asia’s best institutions.In the first edition of Asia University Rankings released on Wednesday, Korea had 14 of the top 100 institutions and more in the top 10 than any other country, according to Times Higher Education.Pohang University of Science and Technology ranked fifth on the list, followed by Seoul National University in eighth. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology was ranked 10th.The British

It costs around 300 million won ($263,000) to raise a child through college in South Korea, a government report showed Wednesday.The report from the Ministry of Health and Welfare is based on a 2012 survey of 18,000 households throughout the country, in which the respondents said they were spending an average of 1.19 million won a month on each child.The amount marks a significant growth from 748,000 won per month in 2003 and also from little over 1 million won tallied in 2009, according to the