This year, 450,000 thanaweya amma students are sitting their exams under a new one-year system, with 43,000 others sitting under the now-scrapped two-year system. The start of the thanaweya amma exam is a major worry for both parents and students, and an extra anxiety is sometimes more than they can bear. This year's old-system thanaweya amma students started their exams on 7 June, with those taking the new system starting the following day. But then disaster struck with reports emerging at the beginning of the week that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter had been circulating copies of the old-system Arabic examination paper accompanied by the answers. The same incident recurred on Tuesday at 10am, just one hour after the beginning of the new-system English examination as copies of the exam with its answers were circulated on social media websites. However the Ministry of Education was quick to say that “it is premature to decide if the circulated copy of the English exam was genuine.” However, on Saturday, the ministry admitted the leakage of the Arabic exam, but said that only one security breach had been noted at a school in the Cairo district of Shubra Al-Kheima, describing this as an “isolated case”. An online drive under several hashtags in Arabic was also sparked to facilitate cheating in the thanaweya amma exams, the toughest in a flawed education system. One of the hashtags is “cheater guerillas” and some students have been accused of sneaking smart phones into exam rooms in order to use them to cheat. Posts of answers have apparently been circulated by online users during the exam. Officials from the Ministry of Education held a press conference earlier this week in which they stated that a 19-year-old student from the Shubra Al-Kheima Secondary School had been accused of circulating the Arabic exam and answers on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. The student has now been arrested. Mohamed Saad, Head of the thanaweya amma examinations at the ministry, said that a 22-year-old student, the cousin of the first, had also been arrested as the police had found a computer in his possession used to post the questions and answers to the exam before it had finished. “The minister of education has also ordered an immediate investigation into the circumstances under which the exam was invigilated at the Belqas Secondary School in the Daqahlia governorate after 30 students were caught sitting the exam with mobiles. Mobiles are totally forbidden while sitting exams,” Saad said. “The computers found with the two men prove that they were the origin of the incident,” he said, adding that the Saturday Arabic exam was different from that on Sunday, which uses the new system. “The ministry will now investigate whether any students have benefitted from the leak. Any benefit is likely to be very limited as the incident happened at only one school. No mobiles were found on students from other schools, and this means that a maximum of 30 students could have benefited.” He said that those responsible for the leak faced severe punishment. Minister of Education Mahmoud Abul-Nasr said at a press conference on 7 June that the students responsible had been tracked in the light of relevant legal procedures to allow for “technical procedures resulting in the identification of the perpetrators”. He said that the ministry had coordinated efforts to prevent cheating with the Ministry of the Interior and the Armed Forces with a view to ensuring the security of students taking the exam as well as the exam papers. “Military planes have been transferring exam papers to outlying governorates, while the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for transporting the papers in Cairo,” Abul-Nasr said. The papers are placed in steel lockers, and these are only opened on the morning of the exam after stringent procedures have been carried out. Military planes started transferring the papers for the first three exams on 7 June, with the rest due to be moved at a later date. Comfortable residences have been provided for invigilators who will be coming from other governorates to monitor the exams. These residences, the minister said, have also been secured in order to guarantee their security and to prevent breaches. Heavy security has been put in place at schools holding the exams, and exams and answer papers are being protected by the Armed Forces and police, the minister said. Saturday's incident is not the first concerning the exam. A calculus exam for the thanaweya amma held at Al-Azhar University in Cairo was leaked in the Nile Delta governorates of Sharqiya and Kafr Al-Sheikh a few hours before the exam began, prompting officials to announce its cancellation. “The examination will be rescheduled to coincide with that of another subject,” read a statement issued by the Al-Azhar schools administration. In 2008, papers from the thanaweya amma were leaked at four cities in Minya, Bandar Al-Minya, Bani Mazar, Abu Qurqas and Matai. Twenty-two students benefited from the incident in the calculus and trigonometry exam, among them the daughter of former MP Magdi Saadawi and the son of a former Shura Council member.
