File Photo: A Secondary school student takes his exam (Photo: Al-Ahram)
A Cairo prosecution ordered on Monday the detention of 12 officials from the education ministry for 15 days pending investigations into the leaking of the end-of-year Thanaweya Aama exams.
The 12 officials that have been ordered detained are reported to be employees in the printing houses that the education ministry assigned to print the exams or the examinations centre for the ministry.
On Sunday Bashir Hassan, the education ministry spokesperson, stated that the leaking of the general secondary certificate's Arabic exam online came from inside the ministry.
Both the prosecution and the internet department in the interior ministry are currently investigating how the general secondary certificate exams were leaked online for the fourth year in a row.
The prosecution on Sunday started an investigation into the leakage of the exams, known in Arabic as Thanaweya Amma, following the arrest of the administrators of the popular Facebook page "Chao Ming cheats" that used to leak exams.
Despite the arrest of the administrators, "The Chao Ming" Facebook pages are still operating and active on Facebook.
The leak continues
An alleged copy of the English exam of Egypt's general secondary certificate was leaked online earlier on Monday, 24 hours prior to the test on Tuesday.
The new leak comes less than 24 hours after the leaking of the Arabic and religion exams and their model answers on social media networks.
An unnamed source in the education ministry told Ahram Arabic website that the English exam leaked online was actually last year's exam.
The Ministry of Education warned last week against anyone leaking the secondary certificate exam, noting that the perpetrators of any leak would be fined EGP 50,000.
This year marks the fourth consecutive year in which the general secondary exams have been leaked, with the prevalence of social media and smart phones facilitating the process.
The Thanaweya Aama exams are a do-or-die for Egyptian high school students since its outcome dictates who goes to what college if any.
More than 500,000 students are sitting for this year's tests.
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