Starting from the 2025 academic year, first-year high school students will be able to choose subjects according to their aptitude and career paths, and graduate by earning credits, as the 'High School Credit System' will be fully implemented.

The high school credit system allows students to choose subjects that suit their career paths and aptitudes based on their basic knowledge and skills, and to graduate by earning credits once they achieve a certain level of academic achievement. It shifts from the existing 'attendance-based' graduation method to a 'credit-based' graduation method, enabling individualized education for students.

Introduction of the 5-grade system in high school and changes in evaluation methods

Starting from the 2025 academic year, the relative evaluation of school records will be reduced from a 9-grade system to a 5-grade system, and will be recorded in parallel with achievement evaluations (A~E). This is expected to significantly change the way school records are reflected in grades.

In the 5-grade system of relative evaluation, the proportion of grade 1 will be expanded from the existing 4% to 10%, grade 2 will be 24%, grade 3 will be 3%, grade 4 will be 24%, and grade 5 will be 10%.

The relative evaluation will be applied to common subjects, general elective subjects, career elective subjects, and some integrated elective subjects, while the achievement evaluation will be maintained for the 9 subjects of social and science integration selection, physical education and art subjects, and science experiment subjects.

From the 2028 College Scholastic Ability Test, which current first-year high school students will take, elective subjects will be abolished, and the same test paper will be applied regardless of the humanities and sciences.

The existing selection method of Korean (choose 1 from rhetoric and composition, language and media), Mathematics (choose 1 from probability and statistics, calculus, geometry) will be abolished and converted to a common test for Korean and Mathematics.

In the exploration subjects, the existing method of selecting 2 subjects from social and science exploration subjects will be abolished and unified into integrated social studies and integrated science.

As the common subjects for first-year students are directly linked to the scope of the College Scholastic Ability Test, the influence of school record evaluations on college admissions increases. If the school record grades for common subjects linked to the College Scholastic Ability Test are low in the first year, not only will it be disadvantageous in the subject selection process, but it will also increase the burden of having to supplement non-academic factors in the comprehensive selection process. Before the introduction of the high school credit system, there were cases where the subjects learned in the first year were not greatly related to the College Scholastic Ability Test, but now they are directly linked to the scope of the test.