20% well done

I taught a guy essay writing for a month. He'd lived in South Africa, so his english is very good, and he's trying to get into a foreign high school. While asking him what a pass mark is in Korea, he couldn't tell me.

In New Zealand, we need to get maybe 50 - 55% to get to do the next course, I told him, and asked about South Africa. He told me it was normally 60% in SA. Okay, so what about Korea? Well, we're always allowed to do the next course. Say what? We never fail. Say what? It doesn't matter what grades we get. Say what?

I asked a few teachers and they concurred, saying the first they'd known of failure (or fear thereof) was studying in a foriegn university. Apparently even university is the same here - fail, but get into the next course anyway!!! Is that healthy?

Let's put the grades in perspective though.

I supervised a basic level listening test (play a tape, students choose correct multi-choice answers) and decided to do it myself. I got 49 out of 50. 5 questions were dubious and one was just impossible.

If it's 4 x multichoice and there's a group of 12 students all guessing, the probability of that number getting hit is 3, right? 3 students should've guessed it correctly. In this class, not one person got it correct. I still don't know the answer, AND I MARKED IT! The teacher who'd organised the test scratched the question to make it out of 49.