Thursday, 8 July 2010

Cheating students learn tough life lesson from crooked exam vendors

via Khmer NZ

Posted : Wed, 07 Jul 2010
By : dpa

Phnom Penh - Cambodian students learned a harsh lesson this week when advance copies of grade 9 exams purchased illegally from street vendors turned out to be fake, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Pupils told the Cambodia Daily newspaper that the bogus copies bore no relation to the actual exams encountered on the first of three days of testing.

"I didn't buy them today, because they are not useful," a student named Davuth said after his bitter first-day experience.

Another 15-year-old student said the bogus exam papers appeared to have been collated from previous exam sheets.

National police spokesman Khieu Sopheak said officials had beensuccessful in transporting this year's exam papers to schools across the country without their contents leaking.

"We were keeping it very secret right up to the first day of the exams," Khieu Sopheak said.

Students also complained that pocket-sized cheat sheets were also of little value with just one in 10 copies proving useful.

A senior Ministry of Education official said the vendors of bogus exams prey on students' fears.

"Students are worried about doing well and these people try to take advantage of that," Secretary of State Mak Vann said.

Students typically pay daily fees to their underpaid teachers, who are cited in some surveys as the most corrupt people in society.

No comments: