Photo: screenshot of online video

 
A student in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, was disqualified for using a mobile phone to search for answers during China's national college entrance exam, or gaokao, triggering waves of questions from the public over the invigilation system at the examination site. 

Authorities responded on Tuesday that the 5G signal the student used might have broken the school's signal shielding, thus enabling the network connection. 

The student, surnamed Wu, was caught cheating in a math exam on Monday by taking and uploading pictures of part of the test paper onto an online education application where users can search for answers to questions in its database. 

The local education bureau in Huangpi district of Wuhan on Tuesday confirmed Wu's act in a surveillance video playback and announced that all of Wu's test results had been invalidated. 

The company behind the app said in a Tuesday statement on Sina Weibo that the app had detected the student's suspected behavior of searching for gaokao test answers on Monday afternoon, but it did not provide any results to the user. 

The picture of Wu's test paper was also not displayed on the app's front end and was not disclosed to public in any form, it said. 

The invigilators and other relevant personnel at Wu's exam site had all been disqualified, according to the Huangpi education bureau.

Wu's cheating caused a sensation on Chinese social media, where people's questions mainly revolved around how the digital device could be brought into the sealed-off exam room and connect to the internet during one of China's most important exams when there is the highest alert for cheating. 

In response, a staff member of the local examination administration office said it might be due to defects in the signal shielding equipment at the site that failed to block the 5G signal Wu used on the phone, reported The Beijing News on Tuesday.

She said the student's successful passing of the security check at the exam site entrance might result from the dereliction of duty of the security check personnel. 

Netizens urged local authorities to undertake further investigations to see if anyone else had evaded the invigilation at the exam site like Wu. 

Global Times