Test takers make final preparations for the National Postgraduate Entrance Examination in Fuyang, Anhui province, before the exam started on Saturday. [Photo by LU QIJIAN/CHINA DAILY]

China's educational authorities said it asked police for assistance in investigating a possible cheating scandal after papers of the national postgraduate exams were reportedly leaked online.

The annual National Postgraduate Entrance Examination concluded on Sunday, but alleged questions and answers for the English and politics courses were exposed on the Internet a day earlier.

The suspected leaked papers were initially published by two major test training agencies to some of their trainees before they were made open online.

Many students who took part in the exams confirmed the leaked questions were exactly the same as that in their test papers.

The Ministry of Education said in a statement on its Weibo account that it had reported the suspected leakage scandal to the public security authorities and will crack down on any cheating activities.

"Those who disrupt testing and harm the equity of education by cheating will get the punishment they deserve," the ministry said.

Both of the two test training agencies have denied involvement in leaking the test papers, saying they only offered some predictions to trainees about the possible questions of the tests.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education showed that 1.77 million students registered for the National Postgraduate Entrance Examination for 2016, marking the first rise after two successive decreases.

Authorities upped the ante this year for cheaters on major national exams as those who organize, assist or are involved in cheating could face up to three to seven years in prison.

As a national exam with more than 1 million test takers every year, the examination is very important for students' academic life, but cheating incidents have been exposed from time to time.

In 2012, Zhou Wensheng, an official with Xiangtan Education Examinations Authority in central Hunan Province stole the postgraduate exam papers from a confidential room and traded them for profit.

Zhou was later sentenced to six years in prison on the charge of illegally obtaining state secrets, and his accomplices were handed out prison sentences from nine months to five years.