arrested File photo: VCG

A total of 11 people including college teachers have been arrested by police in East China's Jiangxi Province over their involvement in two recent cases of cheating in local examinations, and the scores of at least 151 students were declared invalid, the Jiangxi education authority stated on its website on Tuesday.

The cheating took place around June 5 during Jiangxi's "zhuanshenben" exam, which is taken by students before entering a university, the statement said.

One of the cases involved two teachers at Jiangxi University of Engineering (JUE) who secretly took photos of the questions during the exam and then sent the photos along with answers to the questions to a staffer surnamed Liang at a local commercial education agency.

Liang forwarded the answers to the JUE's administrative staffers, who later forwarded the answers to a student surnamed Chen. Chen, working as Liang's part-time assistant outside school, copied the answers on the door of a bathroom stall in a test center for the exam.

Surveillance videos showed that many candidates temporarily went out of the classroom during the exam, the local education authority said. It traced 151 candidates whose answers were exactly the same as the ones that Chen copied in the bathroom.

The 151 candidates were declared to be in violation of the exam. Local police also arrested 11 people including Liang and Chen and six people who are teachers or administrative staff at JUE.

The other case involved Nanchang Institute of Technology (NIT), another test center for the exam in Jiangxi.

In this case, a member of staff at another local commercial education agency surnamed Xu colluded with an NIT teacher surnamed Luo. Luo sent photos of the exam questions he secretly took during the exam to Xu, who worked out the answers with coworkers.

The answers were later shared in a WeChat group set up by the agency, and were used by 81 exam candidates. Though there wasn't solid evidence proving the 81 candidates used the answers, the police found clues that Luo was involved in the cheating, the local education authority said.

Including Luo and Xu, nine people were detained by the police in this case. Five of them are NIT teachers or administrative staff.

The two commercial education agencies in the two cases weren't approved by the government for organizing off-campus training courses, the education authority stated. The local government has suspended their business, it added.

Both JUE and NIT were removed from the test center list for next year's "zhuanshenben" exam, the Jiangxi education authority said.

Global Times