CAIRO - Taking advantage of the current lack of security, preparatory school pupils in many governorates have been behaving like thugs at the examiniation halls. Several incidents of attacks on invigilators and school vilence have been reported over the past few days. Some pupils use knives to frighten the teachers, while they invigilate the end-of-year exams, trying to prevent cheating, Ministry of Education officials in Fayyoum in southern Egypt said. The parents too complain of insufficient security, which is putting their children's lives in jeopardy. In the Delta Governorate of el-Gharbiya, pupils have been threatening to attack the teachers and in invigilators. “We've filed a lawsuit against these thugs, who said they'd attack us if we stopped them cheating,” say the teachers at a preparatory school in Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra. At an experimental language school in el-Mansoura, in the Nile Dilta, the pupils started fighting each other, encouraged by a group of thugs who raided the school, says Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education Mahmoud Emara. In the Delta Governorate of Kafr el-Sheikh, prosecutors have ordered the arrest of two prison escapees, who raided a preparatory school there.
