Drones used to catch exam cheats

EXAMS may seem tough to local pupils but they are a lot tougher elsewhere in the world.

The Chinese education authorities have gone hi-tech to catch cheaters as millions of high-school pupils take their “gaokao”, the annual university entrance exam.

So high are the stakes and so competitive is the exam that some pupils resort to cheating.

Over the years, pupils have used wireless cheating devices disguised as erasers, belts and watches.

Some of them have also used tiny earpieces to communicate with accomplices helping them from outside the exam room.

The innovations have forced authorities to step up their game in response.

This year, exam centres have deployed metal detectors, facial and fingerprint recognition technology, cellphone-signal blockers, wireless detectors and even drones in their fight to root out cheating, media reported.

Even before the exam got under way in earnest on Tuesday, security officers had arrested 52 people nationwide.

Cheaters and their accomplices face up to seven years in jail.

Universities in Shandong province banned pupils from taking leave on Tuesday and Wednesday, to prevent any of them from posing as real exam takers, the official Xinhua news agency said this week.

Cheating is more common for papers that include multiple choice questions such as maths and English.

Some papers, however, such as essay-writing, confound the cheats.

Essay-writing is an important section of the Chinese paper, and topics vary from province to province.

In Beijing, pupils have been asked to write about either their vision of China in 2049, the centennial of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, or about relationships.

Pupils in nine provinces were told to introduce China to foreigners using key words like “Belt and Road initiative”, “bike-sharing”, “high-speed railway” or “mobile payment”, in a test of their knowledge of economic trends.

The province of Jiangsu, notorious for setting tough exams, wanted pupils to expound on vehicles, while neighbouring Zhejiang province has demanded 800-word essays on books. – Reuters