Name: Anonymous 2013-06-23 3:32
China parents riot over no-cheat rules
New measures to clamp down on cheating result in violence against teachers
STRICT : This picture from the internt shows parents and students rioting after teachers took measures to stop students from cheating in China's annual National College Entrance Examination.
It was an unusual protest
Earlier this month, students and parents clashed with authorities in Zhongxiang, a small city in Hubei, China, over new measures which clamped down on cheating during the country's annual National College Entrance Examination (gaokao).
Students in the Chinese city have always performed suspiciously well in the tough national exams and won a disproportionate number of places at the country's top universities.
Last year, provincial authorities smelled a rat and decided to investigate, The Telegraph reported.
They discovered 99 identical papers in one subject. 45 examiners were "harshly criticised" for condoning cheating.
This year, new measures were carried out to clamp down on cheating.
One of them was that 54 external invigilators were randomly drafted in from different schools across the China to oversee the exams.
They used metal detectors to relieve students of their mobile phones and secret transmitters, some of them designed to look like pencil erasers.
A special team of female invigilators was also asked to frisk female examinees, according to the Southern Weekend newspaper.
Outside the school, officials were on hand to catch people transmitting answers to the students, and at least two groups were caught trying to communicate with students from a hotel opposite the school gates.
These rules were too much for the students and their parents to bear, and once the exams were over, a protest involving 2,000 people broke out.
Said one of the protesting fathers, known only as Mr Yin : "I picked up my son at midday (from his exam). He started crying. I asked him what was up and he said a teacher had frisked his body and taken his mobile phone from his underwear.
"I was furious and I asked him if he could identify the teacher. I said we should go back and find him,"
The parents pelted the school windows with stones while chanting: "We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat."
They argued that since cheating is endemic in China, being forced to take the exams without cheating disadvantages their children.
Trapped teachers went online to enlist help. "We are trapped in the exam hall," invigilator Kang Yanhong, wrote on a messaging service. "Students are smashing things and trying to break in,"
Li Yong, an external invigilator, was punched on the nose by an angry father. He had confiscated a mobile phone from a student and then refused a bribe from the father to return the device.
The situation was defused after hundreds of police officers cordoned off the school and the local government conceded that "exam supervision had been too strict and some students did not take it well".
New measures to clamp down on cheating result in violence against teachers
STRICT : This picture from the internt shows parents and students rioting after teachers took measures to stop students from cheating in China's annual National College Entrance Examination.
It was an unusual protest
Earlier this month, students and parents clashed with authorities in Zhongxiang, a small city in Hubei, China, over new measures which clamped down on cheating during the country's annual National College Entrance Examination (gaokao).
Students in the Chinese city have always performed suspiciously well in the tough national exams and won a disproportionate number of places at the country's top universities.
Last year, provincial authorities smelled a rat and decided to investigate, The Telegraph reported.
They discovered 99 identical papers in one subject. 45 examiners were "harshly criticised" for condoning cheating.
This year, new measures were carried out to clamp down on cheating.
One of them was that 54 external invigilators were randomly drafted in from different schools across the China to oversee the exams.
They used metal detectors to relieve students of their mobile phones and secret transmitters, some of them designed to look like pencil erasers.
A special team of female invigilators was also asked to frisk female examinees, according to the Southern Weekend newspaper.
Outside the school, officials were on hand to catch people transmitting answers to the students, and at least two groups were caught trying to communicate with students from a hotel opposite the school gates.
These rules were too much for the students and their parents to bear, and once the exams were over, a protest involving 2,000 people broke out.
Said one of the protesting fathers, known only as Mr Yin : "I picked up my son at midday (from his exam). He started crying. I asked him what was up and he said a teacher had frisked his body and taken his mobile phone from his underwear.
"I was furious and I asked him if he could identify the teacher. I said we should go back and find him,"
The parents pelted the school windows with stones while chanting: "We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat."
They argued that since cheating is endemic in China, being forced to take the exams without cheating disadvantages their children.
Trapped teachers went online to enlist help. "We are trapped in the exam hall," invigilator Kang Yanhong, wrote on a messaging service. "Students are smashing things and trying to break in,"
Li Yong, an external invigilator, was punched on the nose by an angry father. He had confiscated a mobile phone from a student and then refused a bribe from the father to return the device.
The situation was defused after hundreds of police officers cordoned off the school and the local government conceded that "exam supervision had been too strict and some students did not take it well".