Participation rates and average monthly private tutoring expenses for English have risen following the shift to absolute grading on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). When education authorities introduced absolute grading for CSAT English, they expected eased competition to reduce both tutoring and study burdens. In reality, the anticipated effect did not materialize.
According to the education sector Wednesday, Kwak Na-ram, a research professor at Soongsil University, and colleagues published a paper titled "Analysis of the Impact of Introducing Absolute Grading for CSAT English on Private Tutoring Demand" in the Korean Sociology of Education Association's academic journal "Korean Journal of Sociology of Education."
The researchers analyzed private tutoring expense surveys from the Ministry of Education and Statistics Korea. They found that real private tutoring expenses for English temporarily declined in 2015 and the following year, immediately after the government announced the introduction of absolute grading for CSAT English. In contrast, the related costs turned upward from 2017, when the system was actually implemented, and the rate of increase widened thereafter. The study was based on microdata from the Ministry of Education. To exclude the effect of inflation, the researchers converted tutoring expenses into real amounts using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), then conducted an interrupted time series (ITS) analysis comparing changes before and after policy implementation, as well as a comparative interrupted time series (CITS) analysis using subjects such as Korean and mathematics as comparison groups.
A similar trend was confirmed in nominal private tutoring expenses that do not reflect inflation. The average monthly English tutoring expense for general high school students rose by 1,000 won, from 90,000 won in 2016 to 91,000 won in 2017. But in 2018, the first year of absolute grading implementation, it increased by 11,000 won to 102,000 won. English tutoring expenses continued to rise thereafter, reaching 157,000 won in 2024. The proportion of general high school students receiving English tutoring also slightly decreased from 35.4% in 2016 to 35.3% in 2017, then rose to 38.1% in 2018 and recorded 48.8% in 2024.
The researchers also analyzed that "polarization" was observed after absolute grading, with English tutoring participation increasing among top-tier students and decreasing among lower-tier students. Even if absolute grading had the effect of somewhat lowering tutoring demand among lower-tier students, top-tier students received more tutoring to secure Grade 1, resulting in a negligible overall decline in tutoring. "The research found that the absolute grading policy for CSAT English strengthened the motivation for private tutoring participation among top-tier and upper-tier students more than among lower-tier students," the researchers said. "Students who used to obtain Grade 1 by ranking within the top 4% under the previous relative grading system expanded private tutoring as a risk-averse investment to maintain their current grades, while students in the top 4% to 11% range may have increased their tutoring investment in the expectation that they could clear the Grade 1 threshold that was difficult to cross under relative grading."
