Nearly half million of Thanwaeyya Amma (secondary school) students started on Saturday their examinations in 1358 government-supervised exam centers throughout Egypt.
Thanwaeyya exams, scheduled to end on 27 June, are traditionally seen as anxious times for Egyptian families because their results will determine chances of their offspring to join universities due to the state centralized selection mechanism based on overall grade performance.
Education Minister Ahmed Zaki Badr has implemented new regulations to directly supervise the 2010 examination process.
Unlike previous years all Thanaweyya Amma students will take their exams outside their schools, a new measure which is believed to combat attempts of cheatings.
School teachers are also obliged to proctor exams, with absent teachers subjected to possible reduction in bounces if they failed to show up without providing legitimate excuses.
Governors have been delegated with the responsibility of adopting the necessary procedures to prevent the leakage of exam questions. The Armed Forces will transport exam sheets and answer booklets to Upper Egyptian governorates in order to have exam papers distributed at the same time across Egypt.
Security forces will transport exam sheets and answer booklets in armored vehicles to prevent leakage of exams. Officers will be responsible for carrying exams sheets in sealed metal boxes to exam centers.
The newly adopted measures are meant to address a 2008 scandal where some parents in the southern city of Minya were charged with purchasing leaked examination papers.
Translated form the Arabic Edition.
