In the state of Bihar, India, over 300 people have been arrested and 600 students expelled in the aftermath of a massive and blatantly open cheating scandal. The arrests were made following the airing of television footage showing parents and friends of students scaling the outer walls of a school building to pass cheat-sheets to test-takers.
Bihar’s education minister, P K Shahi, said the scale of the cheating going on was too much for the district to handle alone, and asked that parents help. “There are more than 1.4 million students sitting for exams,” he said. “Three to four people helping a single student would mean that there are a total of six to seven million people helping students cheat. Is it the responsibility of the government alone to manage such a huge number of people and to conduct a 100 percent free and fair examination?”
The Times of India reported that in Vaishali on Saturday, where the exams were continuing despite the earlier arrests for helping students cheat, police had to fire their pistols in the air and conduct a “baton charge” to disperse parents and relatives of students wanting to give them cheat sheets. Over 100 people were arrested.
In Patna, Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Upendra Kushwaha, said the central government was taking the reports of cheating “very seriously, and the central government will demand a report from Bihar in connection with reports of widespread cheating in the Class 10 exam,” Kushwaha told the media. “It appears to be a failure of the state government to check cheating,” he said.
Rote learning and too much emphasis on examinations spawns a culture of cheating
The students involved were among over 1.4 million high school 10th graders taking their final examinations of the school year. India’s educational system is renowned for producing multitudes of talented math and science graduates, and literally tens-of-thousands go on to excel in universities worldwide. But excellence for these students comes with a heavy burden, unlike that felt in American and European schools.
One of the many hurdles facing students in India’s educational system is the absolute necessity of getting good scores on the nationwide 10th and 12th-grade tests, known as “board exams.” Good grades on these exams not only determine a student’s admission to the best schools, but also the choice of the most sought-after majors, such as engineering or medicine. Then, as an added burden on students, there is the tremendous amount of parental pressure to succeed.
The thing is, even if a student does not plan to attend college, there is still pressure to do well on the exams, just so the chance of entering a good job-training program in not missed. Although it may seem funny to see a picture of parents scaling a school building’s outer wall to throw in a cheat sheet, the pressure on students can be severe, at times.
A 10th-grade student in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, accused the principal of his high school last year of allowing students to get answers to the exam if they paid him about $100. His family, being impoverished, couldn’t afford to pay even half the amount. Totally upset, the student doused himself with kerosene and set himself on fire in the family’s kitchen. He died the next day.
