The Thanaweya Amma (high school) examinations began Sunday with 592,474 students taking the Arabic language and religious studies exams under the new the ‘Booklet’ system, which includes the questions and answers papers together.
According to state-run newspaper Al-Ahram, this new system will eliminate the risk of exam leaks by requiring students to submit their answers in the question sheet, as opposed to the previous system where answers were submitted in a separate sheet.
The Education Ministry delivered the papers to the governorates in sealed boxes, in cooperation with the Defense and Interior Ministries as well as sovereign bodies in charge of printing the exams.
The main taskforce in charge of following up on the exams, which includes representatives from sovereign authorities and high school examination officials, started its work on Friday at the Ministry. The team will follow up on all details of the exams process as well as monitoring social media pages that have threatened to leak the exams.
Informed source from the Ministry said the Falcon security company has been hired for the first time to secure the 75 exam committees, which were notorious for riots and copying exams last year. Security personnel will check the students at electronic gates ahead of accessing the committees.
Reda Hegazy, head of the high school exams department, warned students against having cell phones on their person inside the committees, even if the phone is off.
Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry has been on high alert to secure the process at all governorates. Efforts are being made to arrest the admins of online pages that publish exam leaks.
Combat groups and security personnel, including women, were deployed in the vicinity of the exam committees to secure the students as well as observers and prevent external cheating attempts.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
