Eight parents and teachers have been jailed for illegally obtaining state secrets after using high-tech devices to help pupils cheat in college entrance exams, Chinese media reported on Friday.
The conspirators used scanners and wireless earpieces to transmit answers, indicating the lengths to which people will go to ensure success in the make-or-break exams that determine the future of 10 million 18-year-olds each year.
Concern about cheating is such that papers are kept under armed guard, and last year their classification was upgraded from “secret” to “top secret.”
But three scams operated in a single school in Zhejiang Province. Those involved were sentenced to between six months and three years for illegally obtaining state secrets. It is not known whether children were punished.
The Legal Daily newspaper said the parents began plotting in 2007. One group bribed a teacher to fax them the test paper and paid university students to provide answers, which were transmitted to the children through earpieces. The ruse was discovered when police detected “abnormal radio signals” near the school.
Another man had bribed a student to send him the questions using a miniature scanner and hired nine teachers to answer them.
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