CAIRO: Egypt’s Thanawya Amma (high school) final exams kicked off Sunday amid extreme measures to curb cheating using elaborate high-tech methods; a frequent phenomenon that has been on the rise recently.
“The Education Ministry started using security wand metal detectors to search students before entering the exam, to make sure that they have no smart phones or Bluetooth earphones,” Minister of Education Moheb El-Rafie said in a statement.
During the past Thanawya Amma final tests, several students were caught using their cell phones to cheat. Answers were sent on Twitter which allows a user to send a message to all the contacts registered and subscribed to the service.
Rafie assures that the ministry studies providing the testing rooms with mobile phone jammers to totally prevent internet connection, to ensure that the student would not use the phone if any was leaked inside the testing rooms.
In November 2014, the ministry published a statement saying that any student caught with a smart phone, the exam will be canceled. Also the student, who will be caught trying to leak the exam over the Facebook, will be referred to a disciplinary committee.
Any proctor helps a student to cheat will be deprived of observing exams for 5 consecutive years with 2-month salary deduction while the one who will be able to catch a student before cheating will be awarded a one-month incentive, according to the statement.
Meanwhile, admins of WebPages used in cheating assured the exams will be leaked 15 minute after it starts. Photos of the question and answer papers of the Arabic language test the Thanaweya Amma circulated on Twitter and Facebook a few minutes after the exam had started, Youm7 reported Sunday.
One of the admins of a WebPages dubbed “together towards a better cheating system,” announced a special program was launched to connect students to Twitter and Instagram, to facilitate photocopying the exam paper and sending it to the page’s admin.
In an interview aired Saturday, Rafie said that Ministry of Interior is securing schools of testing rooms. He added that ministry of electricity was contacted to ensure that power will not cut in the testing rooms.