June
heralds the reopening of schools in this
part of the country. Students indulging in cheating / malpractice –
carrying small bits providing gist of answers is also not unheard of – all
along, these were considered to be few and far and done by those not considered
good. It places such errant students above those who had worked hard has
been a sad reality too. A couple of months back, the
photo of parents climbing the examination hall walls in Bihar, like mountaineering experts went viral !
A daily screamed ‘in Bihar, this is
called reaching Greater heights’ and the photo had its reverberation globally
appearing in Telegraph UK and other papers too. The news ridiculed
stating that in olden days, parents came to school to give tiffin boxes and now
they climb to pass on chits !
The National Higher
Education Entrance Examination ( NCEE, commonly known as Gaokao) is an academic examination held annually in
People's Republic of China. This examination is a prerequisite for entrance
into almost all higher education institutions at the under-graduate level. It
is usually taken by students in their last year of senior high school, although
there has been no age restriction since 2001. The overall mark received by the
student is generally a weighted sum of their subject marks. The maximum
possible mark varies widely from year to year and also varies from province to
province. Held annually, the subjects it
tests vary by region, but in many regions it includes: Chinese language and
literature; Mathematics and a Foreign
language (often English); One or more
subjects of the student’s choice, depending on their preferred major in college
(for example Social Studies/Politics, Physics, History, Biology, or Chemistry) At some point (it varies by region) students
are also asked to list the colleges and universities they prefer in several
tiers, and ultimately whether they are accepted or rejected will be determined
based on their score. Because of this, students who fail the test and thus
cannot attend college will sometimes spend another year studying and re-take
the test the following year.
Preparing for and
taking the Gaokaois a gruelling ordeal, and students are under huge amounts of
pressure from their parents and teachers to do well. The final year of high school, especially, is
often focused intensely on preparation for the exam, and it isn’t unheard of
for parents to go so far as quitting their own jobs to help their children
study during this year. This pressure has even been linked to some cases of
depression and suicide amongst Chinese teens, especially those who perform
poorly on the exam.
The test is
especially famous for its sometimes-inscrutable essay prompts, which can be
vague or confusing but to which students must respond well if they hope to
achieve a good score. After the test is over, local essay questions are often
published in the newspaper, and occasionally become hotly-debated topics. Because
the exam is so important, Chinese society goes to great lengths to facilitate
life for the test-takers on testing days. Areas around testing sites are often
marked as quiet zones, and nearby construction and even traffic is sometimes
halted while students are taking the test to prevent distractions. Police
officers, taxi drivers, and other car owners also will often ferry students
they see walking the streets to their exam locations for free, to ensure that
they are not late for this all-important occasion.
As the Gaokao is so
vitally important, there are always students willing to attempt cheating on it,
and with modern technology cheating has become a veritable arms race between
students, the authorities, and enterprising merchants who offer everything from
false erasers and rulers to tiny headsets and cameras connected to off-site
helpers using the internet to scan questions and feed you answers. Authorities
now often outfit test sites with a variety of signal-blocking electronic
devices, but cheating devices of various sorts are still readily available to
those foolish or unprepared enough to attempt using them. The system is also often accused of regional
bias. Since the best schools, both high
schools and colleges, are mostly in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, this
effectively means that students lucky enough to live in those areas are
better-prepared to take the gaokao and are able to enter China’s top
universities with a lower score than would be needed by students from other
provinces.
In the frenzied
build up to this year's gaokao examination, one concerned mother has gone to
the extremes of hiring a fungshui expert to rearrange the furniture inside a
hotel room she reserved to help channel the energies necessary to bring her son
good luck in the upcoming college entrance examination. The mother surnamed Li
had booked the hotel room ten days ago. With the hotel manager's approval, she
then told the hotel workers to replace the furniture in the room according to
her fengshui expert's suggestion. An eight-diagram glass was installed on the
door to fend off bad luck. Several items of furniture were moved to different
positions in the room. A portrait of Confucius was hung up on the wall and an
incense burner and pagoda model were placed on the desk.
Reportedly, a total
of 9.42 million Chinese students are to sit for the 2015 national college entrance this
year. A man who lost both of his arms
when he was young has been granted extra time to complete his gaokao. Peng Chao, from Panzhihua, Sichuan province,
had sat the test last June but wasn't able to complete the entire thing, as
writing with his feet slows him down. Sichuan officials will now provide Peng
with a special desk and chair, and he will be given (an unspecified amount of)
extra time so that he can complete his exam.
Central organs
covering education, the internet and law enforcement are rolling out their own
tests to ensure the exams not tainted by
dishonesty. A campaign has been launched to crack down on the sale of wireless
devices frequently used for cheating, improper gaokao-related content online
and substitute exam sitters, the Ministry of Education said Tuesday in a
statement. After last year's gaokao, more than 80 education officials,
teachers, invigilators, students and even parents received punishments ranging
from warnings to dismissals in Hubei province, central China.
And in a hi-tech
initiative, China resorted to using drones to spy on students trying to cheat
in its notoriously tough university entrance exams; the silent-flying drones
will hover over students during the exams.
The devices will use 360 degree rotations to scan testing halls and
locate suspicious radio signals created by hidden earpieces used to obtain the
answers to exam questions. They can
hover in the air for up to half an hour and monitor activity from heights of up
to 1,640 feet, according to Chinese news website People’s Daily Online. Two years ago, education chiefs in Jilin even
banned bras with metal clips in a bid to deter students from using increasingly
sophisticated cheating technology.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
5th June
2015.
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