Leak-marred JSC tests end, Education Minister Nahid blames teachers

The last day of JSC exams was no different to others. Question leaks and cheating went on as usual on Thursday and this time, the authorities confessed to having no answer to stop them.

Kazi Nafia Rahman, Staff Correspondentand Sazia Afrinbdnews24.com
Published : 16 Nov 2017, 05:31 PM
Updated : 16 Nov 2017, 05:31 PM

Outside many centres, students were reading ‘Kha’ set of multiple choice questions for ‘Bangladesh and World Studies’ which they got via Facebook messenger and WhatsApp about an hour before the test.

Some parents were disgusted while some were indifferent. But the children, who got the questions, shared them with one another and entered the centres at the last minute after finishing reading the specific answers.

Around 9am, students outside Mirpur MDC Model Institute were struggling to find questions on their smartphones. One student found the ‘Kha’ set called ‘Dikpal.’ His guardian said it was indeed a set of leaked questions.

A student of Sultan Molla School got his hands on the same set and shared it with a bdnews24.com correspondent. She said her brother-in-law got the questions from a Facebook group and sent them to her around an hour before the exam.

At 9:58am, one correspondent informed Tapan Kumar Sarker, examinations controller at the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Dhaka. “Let’s see if those questions appear in the actual exams,” he said then.

The same set went viral among the crowd of candidates outside Motijheel Ideal School and College. It appeared as a jpg file on Facebook messenger and WhatsApp around 9:30am.

A few minutes later, the students received their answers as well.

At 1pm, students said the leaked questions matched verbatim the ones that appeared in the test. They were happy to have got all of them in common.

A student of Siddeswari Boys High School said he and his friends share the costs to buy questions.

“One gets the contact and then we collect money to buy the set.”

When called again around 1:30pm, Tapan Sarker sounded resigned: “We tried to prevent it. I wonder why this is happening!”

He stressed raising awareness among parents to stop the trend.

Some students of Mirpur Cantonment Public School and College admitted that they wrote the answers of multiple choice questions on a paper and took it inside the hall.

“Teachers hardly notice these things,” said one of them when asked how they managed to do so in the presence of the invigilator.

Enraged parents came down hard on the government over the situation.

“What’s the point of taking these exams? The questions were leaked every day!” said one Asgar Hossain.

“The students are learning to cheat only. They have lost faith in the education system.”

Despite the accounts of students, parents and media reports, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid is blunt in his assertion that the government had left no scope for leaking questions.

The questions are printed from the Bangladesh Government Press, he said.

“It (BG Press) used to be a risky place but now there is no chance of questions being leaked from there,” he said when asked about question leak in parliament on Thursday.

The questions are first sealed and then sent to the districts and distributed at the police stations, said Nahid who had been heading the Ministry of Education for the last eight years.

He laid the blame squarely on the teachers.

“Questions are being leaked in the morning because then it is the teachers who are in charge. There are some teachers who make arrangements beforehand and then give questions away to the students.”

“This year, again, they (teachers) have released them after 9:30am on Facebook.”

The ministry did take steps, he said. “We set the rule that students will have to enter the halls half an hour before the exam. They will rest a little, fill in their  details. But it is the teachers who breached the rule.

“They gave in to students’ requests. As if they want the government to implement the rule,” said Nahid.

Headteachers of some schools have said that it was the government’s duty to prevent question leaks.

Minister Nahid reiterated in Parliament that the teachers are not allowed to use the phone inside classrooms. If anyone is found doing so, they will be tried.

To another query, he promised to put an end to coaching business.

“The guardians seem to have a lot of money. Teachers do not teach in classrooms. They have opened shops to coach students,” he said.

“Teachers and professors are involved in all these business. So we are trying to make a law,” he said calling on the MPs to endorse it.