The education ministry is seeking to improve the process of devising the annual nationwide college entrance exam, after the proportion of test-takers who scored at least 90 points out of 100 on last year’s English section fell to a record low of three-point-11 percent.

The ministry said Wednesday that the English portion of the College Scholastic Ability Test for the 2026 academic year, administered in November, was too difficult. 

It said too many questions were changed in the exam writing process and there was little time to adjust the difficulty.

Between the draft version and the final version, test writers changed 19 English questions but only one Korean language question and four math questions.

To ensure appropriate levels of difficulty on future exams, the ministry pledged to increase the proportion of teachers on the question-writing committee for the English section from 33 percent to at least 50 percent and to set up a new panel to monitor difficulty levels in each subject.

The head of the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, which administers the college entrance exam, resigned in December over the low number of test takers to make the top grade on the English section.