Chinese lawmakers are trying to criminalize identity theft on college entrance exams, after revelations that hundreds of students in a single province had their scores stolen or used by others.
This year, more than 10 million students will sit in China gaokao, a state-level college entrance exam widely seen as a key pathway to higher education for students from disadvantaged households.
In June, Chinese media revealed that several Shandong universities had discovered 242 graduates who had stolen the identity and gaokao someone else’s score to enroll between 1999 and 2006. In most cases, the victim did not know their name and gaokao score had been taken. Scores of people have reportedly been punished, but sanctions for students are currently not legislated.
Since then, the standing committee of the National People’s Congress has received a proposal to criminalize exam fraud, and on Thursday the education ministry announced that it would work with authorities to investigate and hold students accountable, the China Daily reported.
Zhu Mingchun, a member of the NPC Standing Committee, said that while some of those involved in such an act, including educational authorities and school administrators, could be charged under existing laws, “for students it is not a crime “
Zhu proposed a new crime of criminal obstruction of an admission to a higher examination or a crime of impersonation.
Last week, 46 people were punished in Shandong for their involvement in two cases, reportedly including the theft of a 2004 36-year-old woman’s test score for a two-year-old student who used it to enroll in a university in 2007.
Since then, the student has been stripped of her diploma and fired from her job. Sixth Tone reported that her father and uncle had organized the robbery and that “coercive measures” had been taken against the father, which may refer to arrest or house arrest. Eight others were under investigation or had been demoted.
In social networks there are numerous anecdotes of students who take the exams with the name of another person or take the results of another student.
In a story posted on Weibo, a former student described his school by choosing some of the brightest students to sit on. gaokao on behalf of students from another school. He suggested that they be paid for doing so.
“I don’t want to blame the selected students, because they really had no other choice. But I remember that this matter did not encounter any obstacles in its implementation, ”they wrote.
“To what extent must the educational system be distorted so that a large-scale activity can be organized and carried out in such an open way? It requires the close cooperation of at least two local education systems and benefits wealthy families. “
Additional reports from Pei Lin Wu
.
