INDIA has gained the reputation of producing fake graduates due to the rampant use of unfair means in examinations that has been going on for a long time. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and, in this narrative, SIMON MWALE shares what he saw for himself in India. Read on…
YOU couldn’t possibly have missed an infamous picture that went viral last March causing world-wide derision.
It showed scores of parents and relatives scaling the façade of a four-storey building in Bihar, India, to help the pupils inside cheat on their school-leaving exams.
Photojournalist Dipankar, who took the photos in Saharsa District, says when he went into the examination hall and began taking pictures, the students did not seem worried at all.
Despite the many reports that appeared in the local newspapers, the authorities seemed uninterested in taking any action against the students, he says.
Dipankar says during a raid at just one school, the authorities seized sheets containing answers which filled up nine sacks.
Nearly 20 parents were detained briefly for trying to help their children cheat, but they were let go after a warning, he adds.
At some schools, like one in Saran in Chhapra District, parents also clashed with the police.
In India, there were jokes about Spiderman and how “scaling great heights” means something else in Bihar.
What you saw in that photograph may be an extreme and risky venture at ensuring examination success in India.
Since seeing is believing, I felt compelled to share with you my own experience on the matter of exams cheating which I saw with my naked eyes as a student at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in new Delhi in the early ‘80s.
It is examination day and all students, local and foreign, assemble in a class room.
The invigilator distributes the question papers and answer sheets and soon the examination is underway.
There isn’t much fanfare until after five minutes or so.
You see one, two, three female students leave the room ostensibly to attend to nature, but in fact to go and consult their handbags which have been left hidden in flower beds outside the classroom. Those who do this, you quickly come to realise, have a semblance of self-respect. They cheat with dignity!
And then there are those girls without a modicum of fear who brazenly open their handbags by their sides on the floor. They do this at intervals of two to three minutes and you, from Africa, begin to wonder what the hell is going on.
But wait a minute. As for the boys, there’s this Indian guy who has established a reputation of being a ‘guru’ or the ‘brightest’ student in class especially among his Indian peers.
Those who get stuck troop to him for consultation. And he dispenses his knowledge in large doses at no cost.
The result; he is crowded by blockheads who speak loudly, oblivious to the need for the quiet typical of an examination scenario.
Soon, there is so much noise in the class worsened by the enterprising  canteen  man selling his ‘chai’ (tea) loudly as the Indian students, almost in a chorus ask one another  who wants a cup. (Rhadika, (you want) chai, Amit, Chai?” They would shout, to the reply, “Acha, acha,” (Yes, yes!”
You, from Africa like me, raise a hand to ask the invigilator, a professor, why there’s so much noise in the room in the midst of a serious exam and the man, speaking as if he has eaten hot chillies, pretends to be concerned and calls for silence. If it comes, the silence is only temporary and it’s business as usual! “Chai, chai!”
One thing I noticed during classes was the furious and copious note taking by the Indian students while most of us from other countries noted the salient points from the lectures.
I was later to learn that those notes were expected to be reproduced in their entirety during exams. No wonder Indian students were always last in finishing the exams.
A prominent cause is the system of what is called “rote learning” common in Indian schools. Rote learning turns students into parrots, capable of memorising anything, but understanding nothing.
The syllabus of the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education relies on memorisation and so do the exams. In many subjects, students don’t write essays; they merely tick long lists of multiple-choice questions.
What few sentences they do write on their own have to be identical to what’s found in the textbooks to win high marks.
Any variation, even if they represent an improvement or show originality, receives low marks. Students who aim for originality and answer questions correctly but in their own words are penalised.
If rote learning is abolished, then cheating will vanish on its own. Students will only be able to succeed if they have understood the concepts taught, because their exam answers will have to reflect their understanding, rather than their memory.
With the exception of new and improved cheating techniques, rote learning kills creativity, along with originality and critical thinking, which is why India is so rarely in the vanguard of anything new in science, technology or design.
It’s not that Indians are not capable of creativity. You only have to look at the magical skills of Indian craftsmen to appreciate the beauty they can produce.
And you only have to look at Indians based abroad to know their abilities. But India’s domestic education system discourages innovation, exploration, risk-taking and the questioning of accepted wisdom.
But why is examination cheating so rampant in India? According to Anna Barchetti Durisch mentor, public speaker and education specialist, about 20 students in India kill themselves every day due to the stress related to exams, wanting to secure seats in prestigious schools, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
South India is considered the world’s suicide capital; especially Kerala, the first fully literate Indian state, has the highest number of suicides committed daily – about 32. According to the Bangalore psychologists from the Indian Southern Medical Centre, “(children)…are under pressure to deliver at school, (…) to appear for competitive examinations, no one gives them any advice about the meaning of life.”
It is widely disputed whether the statistics can be trusted and whether they reflect indeed the real situation due to the fact that suicidal behaviours are illegal in some countries; they are also opposed by the major religions and philosophies, thus there is to be expected a certain degree of under-reporting.
Suicide causes are attributed to several psychological, biological and environmental factors. Strong correlation between low educational achievement, examination and school performance stress and between suicides has been investigated and confirmed.
A survey done in UK on 6,020 students (2002) has shown that 70 per cent of self-harming teenagers with suicidal thoughts have admitted that the cause was their concerns about the school performance and exams.
There have been several reports in Hong Kong, China, Japan and other Asian countries related to the exam-induced psychological problems, suicidal feelings and fear of exams – according to publications by Suen and Yu (2006), Hesketh, Ding and Jenkins (2002), Zeng and Le Tendre (1998).
French sociologist, Durkheim, was one of the first to notice that there is a higher rate of suicide in case of the individuals who are socially not integrated and cannot count on social support (1897).
To address and tackle the problem different suicide prevention efforts have been implemented by different stakeholders: governments, academic institutions, NGOs; realising the importance of the community support.
In the last 30 years several school based programmes have been conducted worldwide at schools for the purpose of the improvement of the mental and emotional health as well as the improvement of the knowledge on suicide; being part of a prevention and post-vention strategy.
Yet, the effectiveness of such programmes has been questioned and sparks a lot of controversy as apparently no drop in suicide rate has been noticed among the participants and even it has been stated that it might prompt in young people what it is supposed to prevent.
There have been even accusations saying that such programmes defeat their very purpose and “normalise suicidal behaviour” by stating the latter occurs as a result of examination and school stress and pressures.
News around the world reporting every day new cases of suicide are concerning and there is a noticeably rising tendency to point out the correlation between the academic stress and the suicidal ideation.
But what is the meaning of life? Sometimes, despite all the beauty and wonder in the world, our life seems so hopeless. What is the meaning of education? Sometimes, despite what we gain every day -more knowledge and experience, we feel so helpless. Why are studies  important to us? We study to obtain a good job, to enjoy more distinction and respect in  society, to become somebody important, to earn money and satisfy our needs and desires, to manage better in practical everyday situations, to find security.
Yet, there is much more to life than that. There are difficulties, obstacles and fears, there is sorrow and suffering, there is death. There is happiness and love, there is beauty and awareness.
Craig Jeffrey of Uttar Pradesh, India, notes that the problem of exam cheating has something to do with attitudes. He says there are students who feel they have the right to cheat. Students are often keen to exercise their rights, but recently there has been an interesting twist – some in India are talking about their right to cheat in university exams.
“It is our democratic right!” a thin, addled-looking man named Pratap Singh once said to me as he stood, chai in hand, outside his university in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. “Cheating is our birth right.”
Corruption in the university exam system is common in this part of India. The rich can bribe their way to examination success. There’s even a whole subset of the youth population who are brokers between desperate students and avaricious administrators.
Then there’s another class of student altogether, who are so well known locally – so renowned for their political links – invigilators dare not touch them. “These local thugs sometimes leave daggers on their desks in the exam hall. It’s a sign to invigilators: “Leave me alone… or else.”
So if those with money or political influence can cheat, poorer students ask, why shouldn’t they? They make other arguments too. India’s university system is in crisis. Cheating happens at every level. Students bribe to get admission and good results. Research students get professors to write their dissertations. “And the professors cheat too, publishing articles in bogus journals.”
On one occasion, the registrar at a college in Uttar Pradesh is reported to have sent masters students’ dissertations to be graded by students at another college.
This type of thing is common, but in this case, school pupils ended up marking masters-level work.
Refusing to cheat, many students work into the night to pass entrance exams  “…I tried to study properly, but my seniors just told me: ‘Buy the cheat books ‘Pinki Singh, Student, ”Singh.
Education authorities in eastern India say 600 high school students were expelled after they were found to have cheated on pressure-packed 10th grade examinations following publication of the photo of dozens of men clambering up the wall of a the test center in Bihar state, perched on window ledges as they folded answer sheets into paper planes flown into classrooms.
When the images of students blatantly cheating under the noses of supervisors went viral, exposing flaws in the much-maligned education system of an impoverished eastern state, Bihar’s education minister, Prashant Kumar Shahi, asked: “Should we shoot them?” addressing a news conference after television news channels aired the incriminating photo and raked up the scandal.
“On average, four or five persons are helping each student use unfair means,” Shahi said, adding it was impossible to curb cheating if parents encouraged their children. Exams held by the Bihar School Examination Board are viewed as make-or-break tests that could transform the lives of millions growing up in poverty.
Copying is rampant during state-run standardized tests and invigilators look the other way when pupils consult peers via WhatsApp messages on phones or jot down answers from notes smuggled into classrooms.
More than 1.4 million students were taking the tests that week, crammed into 1,217 examination centres in Bihar. Supervisors stationed at notorious test centres vie for the postings, enticed by the prospect of bribes from parents eager to have their wards scrape through.
Cheating has been on the rise since the state government offered cash rewards of 10,000 rupees ($160 US) to lower-caste students who were able to answer about half the questions on their tests. This year, more than 1,000 students were caught cheating in three days and have been expelled.
The question is, what’s the solution? Craig Jeffrey, Professor of Development Geography at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford notes the complexity of the problem. “When pro-cheating rallies were held in Uttar Pradesh in the early 1990s,” he says, “the state’s chief minister gave in to demands and repealed an anti-copying act – he actually allowed students to cheat.”
Attempts to chase away family members lurking outside test centres recently backfired, with stone-pelting mobs forcing police to beat a retreat. BSEB Secretary Srinivas Chandra Tiwari told Reuters of plans to hold awareness workshops for students and parents, where attendees would be counseled against unfair means.
But many parents blame the government and indifferent teachers for Bihar’s failure to curb cheating.
In India, exam cheating is just a symptom, says Amrit Dhillon. Clearly, cheating cannot be tolerated. But beyond the immediate offence, India needs to tackle the root causes of such large-scale cheating, which happens in various parts of the country.
Way forward? Who are the educational reformers who can take on this job? Few names but one comes to mind: Sugata Mitra, who won the 2013 TED Prize for his fascinating experiments in the use of the Internet in education. Prof Mitra advocates the benefits of letting children loose in a room with computers, an Internet connection and minimal supervision by teachers. (If nothing else, this would solve the problem of absentee teachers, another bane of the Indian system.)
Prof. Mitra was once asked to name one single measure the Indian government could take to instantly raise the abysmal standards in government schools.
“Let students use the Internet in exams,” he replied. “In doing so, the whole system would have to change.
The kind of questions set in exams would have to change. You can’t ask, for example, simple factual questions because they would be too easy to answer. The questions would have to be framed instead to probe students’ understanding of concepts and principles. Educators would also have to teach differently, just as officials would have to rethink the school curriculum.”
In 2008, India’s Supreme Court said students caught cheating during exams deserved “no leniency… and should be severely punished”.
“If our country is to progress we must maintain high educational standards, and this is only possible if malpractices in examinations are curbed with an iron hand,” the court said.
So while it’s easy to scoff at the people perched on those window sills, the reality is that Indian parents will go to any lengths – or heights – to help their children succeed in their last exams.
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