The government will conduct a sweeping inquiry of all local education offices starting as early as Wednesday amid growing suspicion that some schools have inflated their students' scores in recent state examinations.

Schools and education authorities of Imshil (North Jeolla Province), Gongju, Nonsan (South Chungcheong Province) and Daegu have so far been found to have falsely reported the test results.

Schools in Busan and Seoul are also suspected of doctoring scores.

The scandal put the Education Ministry in a quandary. It has pushed the standardized tests despite warnings of the possibility of manipulation and criticism that they will aggravate already excessive competition among students to excel in examinations.

A total of 1.96 million sixth graders, middle school seniors and high school freshmen took standardized exams in Korean, English, math, science and social studies in October last year.

The Education Ministry publicized last Monday the percentages of students under each local education administration who scored below basic standards, or achieved "basic" or "proficient" levels.

Metropolitan and provincial education authorities with disappointing figures rushed to announce countermeasures such as rewarding or punishing principals and teachers based on the test results.

The national rankings are likely to be revised, however, once the Education Ministry completes its inquiry into local education offices by March 20.

The inspection will look into possible errors in the grading program, data input, computation and reporting processes. Test papers will be graded again if necessary.

The ministry also said inspectors will raid schools and education offices for a separate audit on their administrative systems.

The score forgery scandal hurt the credibility of the assessment system, where test papers were graded by individual schools.

Some blame the Education Ministry for negligence. Apparently, some schools didn't take the tests seriously because the ministry initially said it would make public only the scores of sample students. The ministry suddenly changed its mind in December, however, and ordered schools to file the figures for all students.

Some schools did not have optical mark readers, thus requiring them to grade papers by hand, leaving open the possibility of mistakes. Critics also note that irregularities may have occurred in grading free response questions, which took up about 30 percent of all questions.

The Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union and several parents' groups have boycotted the standardized tests, which they believe bring about excessive competition among schools and regions to climb up in national rankings.

They took students on field trips instead of having them sit for the tests last year.

The Seoul branch of KTU and parents' groups said yesterday they will do it again on March 10, when 2.7 million fourth graders through middle school seniors are scheduled for another round of standardized tests.

Seven unionized teachers were fired late last year for giving students a choice not to take the test.

The KTU claims that the pressure on schools to excel in the standardized tests would result in unfair treatment of teachers and irregularities such as score rigging. Their call on the government to scrap the tests is expected to gain momentum in the wake of the scandal.

The government spent some 5.7 billion won ($3.8 billion) to administer the standardized tests last year.

By Kim So-hyun