“So many students cheated the year I took my gaokao and if cheating were treated as a criminal offense then, I would be much better off than I am now”, wrote another user on Weibo, Time magazine reports. Others insisted that rules should be kept and anyone who breaks them should be punished, regardless of what kind of reasons he/she holds. Some teenagers pay proctors to get copies of the questions ahead of time, while others use wireless earpieces and hidden cameras to receive answers from experts while sitting for the tests.
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Because exam results are so consequential, students and parents have figured out ways to cheat on them. How important? Well, the entrance exam determines which university students will attend and what the options for their major are going to be.
Just a few hours to go before the biggest day of the year for some 9.4 million Chinese students.
Tuesday and Wednesday’s exams were the latest opportunity for China to crack down on cheaters.
For the first time ever, Gaokao takers may face jail time if they are caught cheating. “Cheating on the gaokao exam diminishes the exam’s authoritativeness, and could even impact the credibility of the government”. It is extremely important to do well as students are competing for a chance to earn a place in a university. With the stakes so high, the temptation for students to cheat has led to authorities bringing in drastically punitive laws that could lead to culprits spending between three and seven years in jail. And believe it or not, SWAT teams will walk the finished test papers out and stand in the hallways during the exam.
The university confirmed that the students had been blacklisted, with local media reporting how they were set to appear at a police inquiry.
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China has taken extreme measures to contain cheating in college entrance exams, but it took seven days for Bihar CM NItish Kumar to act on the class 12 muddle and order registration of FIR to investigate the irregularities. Students in certain parts of China – most notably Beijing, home of China’s elite progeny – sit a different gaokao that is perceived as easier than the test taken, for example, in highly populated Shandong and Hebei provinces.
