Students and cheating in exams is a “tradition” that will never truly be eliminated. In fact if anything, cheating has been taken to the next level thanks to the use of technology in which students are finding new ways to cheat in exams. However it seems that in a bid to cut down on cheating, Algeria has decided to turn off the internet.
Yup, you read that right. The country’s government has decided that to attempt to prevent students from cheating in exams, they will turn off the internet. Note that this won’t be forever or for the whole day, but rather it will disable mobile and landline internet services for an hour during the exam period which kicked off on Wednesday this week and is scheduled to run until the 25th of June.
Some might think that this is a somewhat extreme measure, but it should be noted that back in 2016 exam questions were leaked online, which means that there is some precedence to go to such measures to prevent cheats. According to the BBC, Education Minister Nouria Benghabrit told Algerian newspaper Annahar that they were not comfortable with their decision to shut off the internet.
However they also felt that they “should not passively stand in front of such a possible leak.” Of course this won’t eliminate cheating completely as we expect that students will resort to old school methods if it comes to that.
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