Government and Policy

China cracks down on Gaokao cheat case

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-06-03 20:35

BEIJING - China's education authority on Friday vowed an "iron hand and zero tolerance" on cheating as about 9.33 million students will sit national college entrance exams next week.

The Ministry of Education has dispatched several inspection groups nationwide to supervise preparations for the annual test. It also has ordered local educational bureaus to hand out severe punishments if violations are discovered.

Efforts this year will focus on cracking down on wireless communication devices, which are used by students to obtain answers from people outside the exam venues, as well as use of the Internet and mobile phones during the exams, the ministry said in a circular on Friday.

The educational authority will make more efforts to crack down on organized cheating schemes in the make-or-break matriculation slated for June 7 and 8.

As the students are doing some last-minute cramming for the upcoming national college entrance tests, local authorities have launched a crackdown on sales of high-tech devices that might be used to cheat on the test.

Since late April, police in Changchun, the capital city of northeastern China's Jilin Province, have busted eight criminal rings that have admitted to selling devices such as wireless earphones and transmitter-receiver sets that allow their buyers to cheat on the exams, said Liang Xiangdong, deputy head of the city's public security bureau.

Fourteen of the 18 arrested ring members are still in custody, Liang said.

The National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), or "gaokao," is the world's largest standardized test, taken by millions of Chinese students every year. However, a string of cheating scandals featuring the use of high-tech devices have cast a shadow over the test.

Wireless communication devices are used by some students to obtain answers from people outside of the examination venues.

In 2009, teachers in Jilin's city of Songyuan were found to be selling wireless devices to students, which sparked intense public outrage.

Public security authorities in Jilin and Gansu provinces have also begun intensifying identification checks of people living in hotels and rented homes near exam venues as they search for people running cheating-related businesses.

About 9.33 million students have registered to take the exam on June 7 and 8 this year, a slight decrease from the 9.57 million last year, figures from the Ministry of Education show.

More than 72.3 percent of these students will be accepted into college, an increase of 4 percentage points over last year.

About 0.02 percent of the students taking last year's college entrance exam were found to have cheated, according to figures from the ministry.