Some 1,981 students dropped out of competitive foreign language high schools between 2004 and 2008.

A report submitted by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to Grand National Party lawmaker Lee Cheol-woo in a parliamentary audit on Wednesday shows the figure is about 2 percent of the total number of students enrolled in 30 foreign language high schools nationwide in the last five years.

Lee said students who were unsuccessful in competition and found themselves on the lower academic rungs seemed to have opted to drop out and take the high school equivalence test instead.  

The figures were 352 in 2004, 384 in 2005, 478 in 2006, 431 in 2007, and 336 in 2008.

Daewon Foreign Language High School, which had the highest average scores combining the major components of Korean, math and foreign languages in the 2009 scholastic aptitude test, saw 90 students drop out in the last five years.