Senior test again in trouble, over 100 students expelled for copying

The ETEA organisation, which has been monitoring the test, called for suspension of this test, as there has been a significant number of distribution of the test on social networks.

Director of the Organization E TEA, Agon Ahmeti, has declared for KosovaPress that cheating on senior tests today is at alarming levels due to the possibility that social networks and technological equipment have created.

During the organisation's findings, Ahmeti said that in groups where the test answers are being distributed, professors, not just students or family members, are also engaged.

“Today, cheating is outstanding in size, and we consider it at alarming levels because of the possibilities of social networks and technological devices. We as an organization have been following the arrival test and the senior exam for the past two years, especially this year we have found that they are beyond imagination, which includes professors, parents, family members, and what has been the most surprising of them, are included among students who indirectly offer assistance in student elections when they are enrolled in college, to have a kind of debt to vote for them. We have a mobilization from all sides to make a collective fraud, the victim of which children themselves are undergoing these national tests”, Ahmeti said.

Ahmeti indicated that these groups have passed 25 percent of national students, including some 5,500 members at one time.

He points out that they have reported to the Ministry of Education, where they have sent their testimony and expressed willingness to provide help in identifying group administrators and to prove whether there are teachers in these groups or not.

We have also reported to institutional instances such as the Ministry of Education, responsible for these issues respectively, we have sent our evidence so that they are not justified with a lack of evidence. The evidence is abundant and we have expressed readiness to offer for help if there is interest in deepening the initial identification of the administrators by continuing if it is proven if there are teachers in these groups, as it considers is the” problem, he points out.

He gave some recommendations for preventing this phenomenon, while adding that the most reasonable is to suspend national tests because they are only contributing to the way of fraud.

“We've also made several recommendations that we've shared with institutions, where we consider that it's more reasonable to suspend this test and national tests, as we see such sizes of copying and here we just contribute to the way of copying and cheating, on the other hand we cause stress, unnecessary panic in children because this test doesn't have the result and purpose that it's being conceived and kept, I think it's better to be suspended or completely canceled, it's good to keep, but to keep in terms which are correct, and to prevent all the children from copying, he said.

While he said there are devices which prevent the introduction of internet waves, which make it impossible to lock on these groups.

While the chief of the research division at the Ministry of Education, Fatmir Elez told Kosovo Press that the test has long begun at all test centres, but confirmed that according to the first information, over 100 students have been excluded from the exam due to copying.

“At the start of the commission process in the testing centres has called on students who have no right to enter the room by telephone, most students have respected this rule even after this alert students have managed to enter the classroom by phone, where some of them have managed to photograph the test, but most of them have left the test. What measures of copying we will observe after publishing the results... Some 100 students have been excluded from the exam on the basis of the first information, since all materials have not yet been returned to August”, Elez points out.

Elez announced that students who have been expelled will undergo the exam in August, while for administrators who have not taken measures to prevent copying, measures will be taken.

The tests at the start of the exam are starting to be distributed on social networks, so Elez has indicated that the investigator needs to find out who's behind these pages. He added that there is information that even teachers are members of groups.

This remains the investigative work of dealing with the managers of these pages that set them up for this purpose and to discover who hides behind them are teachers or just students, but we have information that has teaching that they are members of these groups and see what measures should be taken to them, but that groups and their purpose must first be revealed”, Elez said.

While, the results of the prom exam are expected to be released on 27 June.