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College Exam Cheating Operations Uncovered
GUANGZHOU: Police in South China's Guangdong Province are now investigating an organized cheating operation in Dianbai County, Maoming of Guangdong Province, during national college entrance exams. The exams lasted from Friday to Sunday.
Among the dozen suspects who were taken to the police bureau last Saturday were a high school teacher who was also an invigilator, three students caught cheating and eight people who sold the answers.
Police said the teacher later admitted during the math exam last Saturday morning, he answered all the multiple-choice questions first, used a cellular phone to call his cousin and tell him the answers outside the exam centre, who then paged the answers to the students who paid in advance for the answers.
"We will not stop the investigation until the whole affair is out in the open," said Li Zhenbin, vice-county chief of Dianbai.
It was found out that in Dianbai, students were guaranteed qualified scores as long as they pay as high as 3,000 yuan (US$361) for each test subject portion of the test.
In fact, letters about the cheating at the exams had reached the media, the provincial departments of education and public security several weeks before the exam.
Police started to take action last Saturday after reporters from Xinkuai Daily, a Guangzhou-based newspaper, who pretended to be students who wanted to buy the answers, gathered enough evidence.
Officials from the Guangdong Education Bureau stressed that the cheating, having been found only in the county, will not have a negative impact on students who took the test in other areas.
In another development, China's Central Television Station (CCTV) reported on Sunday another shocking scandal that involved many students in Jiahe County, Hunan Province.
CCTV played parts of a videotape, taken by some local journalists, of classrooms in the county's test centre from a neighbouring building.
The tape showed in one classroom, some students were secretly passing answer notes to each other, and some were discussing the test in lowered and muffled voices, yet the supervising teachers pretended that nothing was happening.
When time was up and the alarm clock rang, teachers even waited several extra minutes for students instead of requesting them to leave the classroom.
In another videotaped classroom, the situation was even worse. Students were making gestures to each other, discussing and even exchanging answer sheets. Test supervisors, however, simply walked to the lobby outside the classroom in an obvious attempt to allow the ongoing cheating.
Sources said a special task force made up of officials from the provincial departments of education and supervision have been sent to investigate the case.
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