The annual school entrance examination was held nationwide Thursday with the most important variety of candidates in seven years due partly to an unusually excessive beginning charge in 2007.
The Faculty Scholastic Capability Take a look at (CSAT), seen as one of many nation’s most essential educational occasions, started at 1,310 check facilities throughout the nation at 8:40 a.m. and is about to finish at 5:45 p.m.
Take a look at-takers arrived at designated facilities amid cheers from their juniors, mother and father and lecturers. Law enforcement officials have been deployed nationwide to assist transport college students and, in some instances, carry them their lunch packing containers from dwelling. And college students residing on small islands had traveled to the mainland beforehand as no check facilities have been arrange on islets.
A complete of 554,174 individuals have utilized for this 12 months’s examination, up 31,504, or 6 %, from final 12 months and the very best determine since 2018, in keeping with the schooling ministry.
Highschool seniors and graduates account for 67.1 % and 28.9 % of the entire, respectively, it mentioned.
Outdoors a highschool in Cheongju, about 110 kilometers south of Seoul, 21-year-old Shin Ju-won, a pupil at Chungbuk Nationwide College, joined a cheering squad.
“We have been cheered on once we took the examination, so we need to repay our juniors,” Shin mentioned. “They’re most likely very nervous, however I hope they do properly.”
Competitors for admission to prime schools is anticipated to be fierce because of the massive variety of test-takers and the federal government’s backtracking on a medical college quota improve.
Final 12 months, the quota was elevated by 1,497 slots to 4,610 beneath former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s coverage to handle a scarcity of medical doctors.
The plan backfired, nonetheless, forcing a return to the earlier degree of three,123 seats.
In the meantime, the variety of test-takers is up partly as a result of most individuals born in 2007, the 12 months of the auspicious Golden Pig that noticed an unusually excessive beginning charge, are actually of their third 12 months of highschool.
In Jeonju, some 200 km south of Seoul, a mom quietly wiped away tears as she watched her daughter enter a check heart.
“I am simply grateful to my daughter that she studied for over 10 years to take this examination,” she mentioned, giving her final identify as Kang. “I simply need her to carry out as standard with out aiming too excessive.”
The CSAT is the fruits of years of grueling research for a lot of college students, and the federal government makes each effort to cater to their wants on examination day.
All plane takeoffs and landings throughout the nation will likely be banned from 1:05 p.m. to 1:40 p.m. to attenuate noise throughout the English listening portion of the examination.
Plane in flight, excluding these in emergency conditions, should stay within the air at an altitude of three kilometers or larger beneath the route of air visitors management authorities.
In Seoul, the subway service was elevated by 29 runs, principally between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., to assist college students get to their check facilities on time.
Inventory markets, that are usually open from 9 a.m. till 3:30 p.m., opened one hour later to ease morning rush-hour visitors and can shut one hour later.
The examination solutions will likely be finalized and introduced at 5 p.m. on Nov. 25 earlier than report playing cards are distributed to test-takers on Dec. 5.
