Ammon News - by Muath Freij/ Jordan Times
AMMAN — The Anti-Corruption commission (ACC) has detained a number of people suspected to be involved in a claimed leak of questions in this year’s General Secondary Certificate Examination (Tawjihi) summer session, according to the ACC chief.
“The ACC’s initial investigations indicate that the questions leaked to Tawjihi students were the anticipated questions, and not the actual ones used in the exam,” ACC President Samih Bino said at a press conference on Monday, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.
This is the first time that the ACC is officially involved in investigating an alleged leak of Tawjihi questions.
The investigation follows criticism of “rampant cheating” in the make-or-break exam for students, which decides their chances in pursuing higher education.
Mustafa Rawashdeh, president of the Jordan Teachers Association, demanded that the Ministry of Education investigate the claims of leaked questions.
According to Rawashdeh, several questions in the Basics of Administration test for the IT stream on Monday were given to students prior to the examination.
“Such incidents will have a negative impact on the students’ performance during the Tawjihi,” he told The Jordan Times over the phone.
But Education Minister Mohammad Wahsh said the questions were not leaked before the exam, adding that the exam went on smoothly with no complaints, Petra reported.
In remarks to Petra, Wahsh said a photo was taken of a test paper as the exam began and was leaked outside an exam hall by a student using a mobile.
The minister added that some have made a business out of exploiting students and selling them fake questions.
A Tawjihi student, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Jordan Times that many students claimed they had obtained copies of the exam’s questions before they sat for the test.
So far, 1,970 violations were recorded in the current Tawjihi summer session, which started on June 16 and concludes on July 7, according to Education Ministry Spokesperson Ayman Barakat.
A total of 142,650 students registered for the summer session exams.
Earlier this month, the Public Security Department (PSD) apprehended 31 people for violating exam regulations.
Around 21 of those apprehended were trying to leak answers to students, eight threatened or attacked the exam’s supervisors and one attacked a police officer.
The PSD has also dealt with 23 cases of chaos inside examination halls in different governorates.
More than 6,000 police officers deployed in 1,030 schools are helping ensure the summer session exams go smoothly.
An Al Ghad investigative report in 2012 revealed that cheating was a widespread phenomenon on the Tawjihi, alleging that multiple groups of people had sold exam questions and answers with the complicity of some officials from the Education Ministry, and that some bookshops sold small-print copies of the tests with the answers included.
Prepared under the supervision of the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism network, the report revealed wide-scale cheating.
In May, Rawashdeh said that cheating on the Tawjihi had become the “norm, not the exception”, calling on the Ministry of Education to a strategic plan to combat the phenomenon.
The director of the education ministry’s examination department, Sattam Awwad, announced during a seminar on the examination last month, that there are long-term plans to overhaul the Tawjihi system, such as cancelling the IT stream and incorporating its important courses in the scientific and literary streams.
Other plans to be implemented by the ministry include reverting to a one-examination session instead of two.
“The current examination system costs the ministry around JD25 million, in addition to the fact that it burdens our staff, who work for an entire six months to prepare for each session,” Awwad said at the time.