Teachers’ Names to Appear on Test Sheets

The nation’s education authority plans to introduce a measure to protect teachers’ intellectual property rights by writing their names with their questions on midterm and final exam sheets.

The Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association said yesterday, “In accordance with the Supreme Court’s decision that intellectual property rights can be applied only when a teacher clearly writes his or her name near test questions, more teachers are feeling the need to clarify their names on exam sheets. We will have the system in place by negotiating with the government and at the same time launch a drive to raise the awareness among teachers nationwide.”

The organization’s announcement came in the wake of the court’s ruling Monday in a lawsuit filed by the teachers in 2005 against a private enterprise, which had allegedly made a fraudulent use of the questions on school exams.

In the ruling, the court said teachers can exercise their rights for intellectual properties only when exam papers carry the names of teachers who provided the questions. Otherwise, the rights belong to an educational office in the case of a public school, and to a school foundation as for a private school.

With this decision, only teachers from S and K girls’ high schools who put their names on the test papers are eligible for their indemnities, among those who filed the suit together.

Kim Dong-seok, spokesman of the teachers` association, said, “We will establish a system where a principal or a deputy principle makes sure that an exam paper holds the names of teachers who provided the questions before taking exams.” Kim also added that, “with this method in place, we believe we could prevent the arbitrary use of school exam questions by private institutes.”

kky@donga.com