The Central Operations Room at Egypt’s Ministry of Education and Technical Education has reported, on the fourth day of the Thanaweyya Amma (high school leaving) exams, that it has so far tracked 27 cases of academic misconduct.
The cases included two students from Giza and Cairo governorates that were involved in leaking the exam on social media platforms, as well as 25 cases of electronic cheating.
The 25 cases ranged between attempting to leak the exam on the messaging application Telegram and using mobile phones during the exams. The students who were involved in cheating were identified, and the necessary legal measures were taken in these cases.
About 255,353 students from the literary division of the Thanaweyya Amma took the second foreign language exam on Tuesday.
Reda Hegazy, Deputy Minister for Teachers’ Affairs, was quoted by local media as saying that the Ministry of Education and Technical Education is keen to follow up on the examination process.
This review aims to regulate the entry of students to examination committees, preventing student gatherings, and preventing parents from crowding in front of the committees, to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
About 649,000 students are taking this year’s Thanaweyya Amma exams, which started on Saturday amid strict precautionary measures against COVID-19.
The Central Operations Room received a complaint that two questions in the language exam were repeated. Hegazy confirmed that he would take the necessary measures for the benefit of the students.
Meanwhile, a video was circulated on social networking showing a student filming his colleagues while they were taking photos of the Arabic language test at an examination centre earlier this week.
The Ministry of Education and Technical Education indicated that the students were from the Misr Language School. Tarek Shawky, Minister of Education and Technical Education, issued a decision to take the necessary legal measures against those students.
In a televised statement, Shawky said that there are external parties working inside and outside Egypt with audio and video equipment to leak the exams. He asserted that the ministry will not accuse anyone before finding out all the necessary information.
He added that the ministry has detected 50 cases of cheating so far, which is less than other years.
