Kids put the heat on police exam cheaters in China

[July 31, 2009]  BEIJING (AP) -- Police officers contemplating cheating on promotion exams met their match this week in northwestern China -- 18 serious-faced fifth-graders walking the beat.

The students were decked in blue and white school uniforms, and photos on the local government Web site showed them standing behind podiums and sauntering up and down aisles of various classrooms to monitor 265 police test-takers in Liangzhou county in Gansu province

The experiment, carried out by the Liangzhou Discipline Inspection Commission and Organization Department, was implemented after adult supervisors were found to allow some cheating during police exams to prevent officers' embarrassment, according to the Web site.

The strategy worked well, too.

Of all of the exam takers vying for 66 district-level judge, prosecutor and investigator positions, students identified 25 alleged cheaters, whose test results were disqualified, the report said.

"It was exciting. I learned why there must be supervisors and how important it is to rely on yourself in tests," Liang Liang, a 12-year-old supervisor, was quoted Friday as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Cheating on tests is common in China, where pressure to pass competitive exams for entrance to university, civil-service jobs and other coveted positions is intense.

"Students took their jobs very seriously and their presence also applied greater moral pressure on the exam takers to perform honestly, which had a positive effect and encouraged them to set better examples in the future," the report said.

[Associated Press]

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