Zawaya

Is deterrence a solution?

By: Monia Ferjani

Students, parents, and supervisors are all becoming increasingly worried with the approaching dates of the baccalaureate examinations in the Maghreb, due to the spread of cheating practices year after year. These malpractices take different forms and use innovative methods mirroring the developments of communication technologies. Actually, cheating in exams is an old phenomenon that used to be rare as it was limited to students with weak results and levels. In recent years, however, cheating in exams has spread remarkably, flouting the students’ efforts to maintain academic integrity and rely only on their intellectual and cognitive abilities.

Despite all the efforts deployed and measures of precaution undertaken by the Maghreb Ministries of Education, the phenomenon of cheating has been worsening and taking on new and dangerous forms, by using traditional methods as well as modern ones, such as Bluetooth, text messaging via mobile phones, and audio recordings of lessons on MP3 players and iPods.

The Tunisian Ministry of Education announced 385 cheats caught during the baccalaureate examinations of last year. The penalties ranged from failing the student to banning them from taking the baccalaureate exams for a period of five years.

For this year’s session, the Ministry has approved a number of new measures to deal with cheating in exams, at the top of which comes an agreement with mobile network providers in order to fully jam phone calls inside examination halls by isolating the examination rooms from the telephone networks. This jamming measure will cover about 500 examination halls by putting them out of the coverage area during exam days.

This jamming measure will be accompanied by an awareness campaign to alert students about the seriousness of fraud and the repercussions that it can lead to. Very strict measures will also be taken to limit students out of the exam rooms to smoke or go to the toilet. Moreover, calculators that are not licensed by the Institute’s administration will not be authorized for use at the exam. Examination supervisors should also check the students’ tools and keep an eye on their behaviors during the exam session.

Are all these measures sufficient to cut down on cheating?

Aren’t these measures a pre-recognition of the students offense and showing poor faith in them before they even do anything wrong?

Is the role of the concerned authorities to provide a suitable environment to take the examinations, or to put pressure on students and show them a lack of confidence in their integrity?

Wouldn’t that have a negative effect on the students’ performance and results and how they deal with studies?

I think it’s not rational to tackle the issue of cheating during the exam only when its date is approaching at the end of each year. I believe that it would be more effective to have a program founded on sound components all year long, involving teachers, parents and educational psychologists. There should also be meetings and activities for students in order to establish new study habits that give knowledge its true value, and repulse them from the mentality of dependency and lack of self-confidence. I also call on the Ministries of Education in the Great Maghreb, especially the examinations departments, to revolutionize the exams contents, in a way that will encourage students to deeply think and analyze, instead of automatically reciting information; that way, cheating will be rendered really difficult.