Secondary school students across Egypt sat down to take a physics exam on Sunday morning amid ongoing claims that the test had been leaked as part of a series of leaked exams through the infamous Facebook page Chao Ming.
However, the Education Ministry denied that the exam had been leaked and asserted that all published exams through social media outlets are fake, according to state-run newspaper Al Ahram.
Daily News Egypt checked the Chao Ming Facebook page where the physics exam was reportedly leaked and found that only purported answers for the exam were published on the page following the exam. Several comments from social media users on the posts expressed anger at the page’s administrator for publishing answers after the exam rather than before.
“You must be joking. Why didn’t you publish it before the exam. Most of my answers are wrong after comparing them with the published,” commented Ali Hakeem on the Chao Ming post published on Sunday.
Similarly, Abdallah Taha, a secondary school student who attended the physics exam, told Daily News Egypt on Sunday afternoon that the physics exam had been leaked through several social media outlets and that the Education Ministry replaced the exam with another alternative exam.
“The exam was leaked in the morning through several social media outlets, and I checked them. The exam we received was different and marked with a blue official signature from the ministry. This marked that the exam was an alternative,” Abdallah clarified.
The Chao Ming page also published purported answers to secondary school sociology exams on Sunday. Daily News Egypt could not verify the authenticity of the published answers from students who attended the exam.
The Ministry of Education warned students and their parents about following the aforementioned page and other similar pages, arguing that leaked exams are false, according to state-run newspaper Al-Ahram.
Daily News Egypt reached out to the spokesperson for the Ministry of Education and the head of the Central Administration for Secondary Education, but they were not available for comment.
On Saturday, Education Minister El-Helaly El-Sherbiny visited parliament to be questioned by a number of MPs over the leaks. He stated that twenty-six online sites threatened to leak the thanaweya amma secondary school exams before they commenced during a meeting with parliament’s Education Committee on the same day.
El-Sherbiny said these websites were previously monitored by the Ministry of Education.
The minister said studies were carried out to prevent electronic exam leaks, and he requested that the government suspended internet services for an hour before and after scheduled exams.
