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Leak of English test answers under probe

Leak of English test answers under probe

Updated: 2012-04-18 21:27

By Luo Wangshu (chinadaily.com.cn)

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The Ministry of Education said on Wednesday it is investigating the leak of test answers during the national self-taught higher education examination.

The ministry's press office told China Daily that they learned about the alleged leak from a news report on Wednesday, and are conducting a further investigation with police.

The English test started at 2 pm on Sunday.

The Beijing Times reported that dozens of students were seen arriving early at a testing room in Beijing carrying cheat sheets. "The answering sheet is the real answers to the examination," a student surnamed Zhang told the paper.

Self-taught higher education examinations are for self-taught students seeking associate and bachelor degrees who have completed courses from various institutes. Self-taught students aren't required to take a college entrance exam.

Between 1981 — when the exam started — and 2010, 57 million students took the exam, nearly 20 million received various certificates and 9.82 million students earned associate and bachelor degrees.

"The exam is the most difficult part of working toward my degree," said a Chongqing student surnamed Wang, who declined to give her full name. "And the English test is the biggest obstacle for most students."

Wang took the English test on Sunday but had a bad feeling about the exam. "I have a feeling I failed," she said.

Wang said she was angry after learning that some of the students may have cheated. "I studied very hard but might fail. How could the people who didn't study pass the exam? It is so unfair," Wang added.

The 21-year-old woman works as part-time in sales, and studies during her free time. "I studied until 1 am the night before the exam," she said.

Test answers were also leaked at the national entrance examination for postgraduate students in January, and Minister of Education Yuan Guiren said in March that the police in-vestigation into the leak had made great progress, adding that the ministry would make the results of the investigation public soon.

"It is a seriously horrible thing, which breaks the basic social order," said Liu Yunshan , a professor of Pe-king University. "It touches the bottom line of a society."

"In ancient times, the official who was in charge of the imperial competitive examination (the national official selection exam) would be sentenced to death if the answers had been leaked," Liu said.