{"id":16902,"date":"2026-06-22T10:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=16902"},"modified":"2026-10-24T15:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:00:15","slug":"high-school-cheating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/high-school-cheating\/","title":{"rendered":"Police at Examination Complexes: Can Egypt\u2019s 2026 Measures Curb Secondary-School Cheating?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly before this year’s Thanaweya Amma (general secondary) examinations began, the Ministry of Education <\/span>announced<\/span><\/a> that it would apply the “examination complexes” system for the first time, in a step it said aims to tighten control over exam centres, some of which have in past years been associated with incidents of mass cheating or weak security.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Khaled Abdel Hakam, head of the Thanaweya Amma examinations, the system relies on grouping exam centres within an “examination block” in each educational administration, with a police force <\/span>stationed<\/span><\/a> at each block to secure it and monitor movement in and out, while students sit the exams within their own educational administrations but at the venues designated within these blocks.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ministry also decided, for the first time, to use national schools as exam centres, taking advantage of their large spaces and their capacity to accommodate large numbers of students in a single location, which makes monitoring and security easier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abdel Hakam stressed that these measures are only part of the ministry’s plan to confront cheating, pointing to other measures that will not be disclosed before the exams so that students cannot prepare to circumvent them. <\/span><\/p>\n

According to official statements, the idea also targets what are known as the “children of the elite” exam centres, which have long stirred controversy because they are located in areas where control is difficult to tighten, compared with exam centres grouped within a single security perimeter.<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Dr Assem Hegazy, an education expert and professor of educational psychology at the Faculty of Education, Cairo University, describes the ministry’s measures as usually a “reaction” that fails to keep pace with students’ technological edge, but says the “examination complexes” can be considered a pre-emptive idea that may prove effective against the phenomenon of the “children of the elite”, who made a point of sitting the exam in isolated centres far from view, in order to cheat by imposing control through their parents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking to Zawia3, he criticises the idea of the complexes because of their distance from some students who live in the same educational administration but far from the complex, proposing coordination with local authorities to provide dedicated transport for students to make it easier for them to get there.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Thanaweya Amma examinations for the 2025\/2026 academic year begin on Sunday 21 June, and according to official statements, 921,709 students are sitting<\/a> the Thanaweya Amma examinations under both<\/a> its old and new systems, of whom only 3,403 students are enrolled in the old system, while the remainder sit the exam under the new system. The examinations continue over 26 days, ending<\/a> on 16 July.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>A Shortage of 400,000 Teachers in Egypt: A New School Year with an Unresolved Crisis<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n


\n10 Years of Chasing Cheating<\/b><\/h1>\n

It began in 2016, which later became known as “the year of leaks”, when the Ministry of Education was caught off guard by the <\/span>leaking<\/span><\/a> of a number of exam papers before students entered the exam centres, while other papers circulated on social media pages immediately after the exam began, so that students who had managed to get in with mobile phones were able to obtain the answers through private groups on “Facebook”, “WhatsApp” and “Telegram”.<\/span><\/p>\n

The very next year, the ministry deliberately changed the format of the exam from a question paper and an answer booklet to a “<\/span>booklet<\/span><\/a>“, that is, an exam booklet containing both the questions and spaces for the answers, to make photographing it and circulating it on social media harder for anyone who tried.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ministry later added other measures, such as installing electronic gates in front of exam centres to detect metals and electronic devices, using a <\/span>wand<\/span><\/a> to detect mobile phones on entry to schools and classrooms and during the exam, installing surveillance <\/span>cameras<\/span><\/a> inside exam rooms, and printing <\/span>codes<\/span><\/a> specific to each student on the booklets to identify the source of any photograph should it leak, then changing the exam format for a second time to the “<\/span>bubble sheet<\/span><\/a>” in 2021, in addition to tightening the penalties for cheating. <\/span><\/p>\n

But the accumulated measures did not stop the phenomenon, because they are always a “reaction” to the unconventional cheating methods that students devise every year. It started with using mobile phones to communicate with those facilitating cheating outside the exam centres, but this later developed, and students began carrying tools that are not easily detected, including: <\/span>Visa cards<\/span><\/a> carrying a mobile SIM connected to an earpiece, <\/span>smartwatches<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>earpieces<\/span><\/a> implanted inside the ear and connected to a small device fixed to the clothing that makes calls, and <\/span>electronic glasses<\/span><\/a> fitted with cameras.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides technological tools, the Ministry of Education has revealed that some employees and workers help photograph and circulate exam papers. For example, investigations in 2016 revealed the <\/span>involvement<\/span><\/a> of an official at the ministry’s secret printing press, his wife and her sister in leaking the exams, after he obtained the Arabic-language exam question papers from a colleague’s computer at the secret printing press, copied them onto a “flash drive” and handed it to his <\/span>wife<\/span><\/a> to pass on to the administrators of leak pages on social media in exchange for sums of money. <\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, the government issued <\/span>Law <\/span><\/a>No. 205 of 2020 on combating acts disrupting examinations, which included penalties of imprisonment for terms of up to 7 years and fines of up to EGP 200,000. <\/span><\/p>\n

Students, for their part, are held accountable under <\/span>Ministerial<\/span><\/a> Decree No. 34 of 2018 on regulating the cases in which an exam is cancelled or a student is barred from it, which permits barring a student who attempted to cheat or succeeded in cheating from sitting the exam for one or two years.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2022, an Arabic-language teacher in the Belbeis educational administration was <\/span>implicated<\/span><\/a> in an incident in which the Thanaweya Amma physics exam questions circulated on social media pages after the exam began, through his position as head of the Abu Zaabal Joint Secondary exam centre, which falls under the Khanka educational administration in Qalyubia.<\/span><\/p>\n

All this is on one side, and what are known as the “<\/span>children of the elite<\/span><\/a>” exam centres are on the other. The term refers to mass-cheating exam centres located in specific areas inhabited by large families, especially in rural areas, who intimidate teachers to make cheating easier for their children.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Poverty Kills Families: The Phenomenon of Collective Suicide Is Rising in Egypt<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

Why Is the Phenomenon Getting Worse?<\/b><\/h1>\n

Dr Assem Hegazy attributes the spread of cheating in Thanaweya Amma to many reasons, including the decisive role of the Thanaweya Amma total score in determining students’ futures through the faculty they enter, the limited number of seats at less costly public universities, and student numbers approaching one million, in addition to the culture of “top faculties” and the absence of conscience and religious restraint.<\/span><\/p>\n

He adds to Zawia3 that, besides the reasons that push students to seek extra marks by any means, there is a social culture that supports cheating in exams and justifies it on grounds such as the lack of teaching in schools, the difficulty of the exams, or tightened measures that strain students’ nerves, among others, pointing out that cheating only happens through the will of the student and the facilitation or ignorance of the invigilator, which measures will never be able to confront 100%; all the ministry does is try to limit the phenomenon, not eradicate it.<\/span><\/p>\n

A former Ministry of Education official, who preferred not to be named, affirms that cheating is continuing and escalating, and that anyone who says he will eliminate cheating 100% is deluded; all the ministry’s efforts consist of achieving the principle of equal opportunity among students to a satisfactory degree, but it will not be achieved 100%.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Zawia3, he points out that besides the social reasons supporting cheating, there are technical reasons in the exams that have made cheating easier and more effective, foremost among them the “bubble sheet” system applied since 2021, which is based on multiple-choice questions that the student answers by shading the correct option on a separate sheet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The source explains that as soon as the exam questions reach any teacher, he can answer them within minutes and send the answers to students inside the exam centres, who then answer the questions in a very short time, unlike what used to happen under the essay-question system, where writing the answers took up a considerable part of the exam time, on top of the time needed for thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ministry of Education had applied the “bubble sheet”<\/span> system<\/span><\/a> starting from the 2020\/2021 academic year; it relies on multiple-choice questions and fast, accurate electronic marking, and on offering closely similar options among which only a student who has prepared well for the exam can tell which answer is correct. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, cheating incidents have shown that this mechanism may lose its effectiveness if the questions are leaked to teachers of the subject or to parties able to solve them, which allows students to obtain the correct answers easily.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ahead of this year’s exams, the trade in “cheating earpieces” came out into the open on internet pages, after having been run in secret, and<\/span> advertisements<\/span><\/a> spread promoting miniature earpieces, accompanied by explanations of how to hide them inside clothing, hair clips or wigs. <\/span><\/p>\n

In this context, the authorities <\/span>arrested<\/span><\/a> those in charge of a social media page that specialised in marketing and selling ultra-small earpieces, and said these were sold specifically to school and university students for use in cheating.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Outside the Government’s Calculations: How Does the Law Multiply the Suffering of \u201cPensioners\u201d?<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n


\nThe “Children of the Elite” Exam Centres..<\/b><\/h1>\n

The term “<\/span>children of the elite<\/span><\/a>” is applied to Thanaweya Amma exam centres to which some students from families that hold sway in certain areas deliberately transfer at the secondary stage, in order to sit the exam in an isolated place controlled by local people, who intimidate those running the exams to make cheating easier for their children.<\/span><\/p>\n

These exam centres, which used to be known as “riot committees”, began in a few limited areas in <\/span>the governorates of <\/span>Sohag<\/span><\/a> and Kafr El-Sheikh,<\/span> but over the years they expanded and spread across all governorates.<\/span><\/p>\n

For its part, the ministry <\/span>imposed<\/span><\/a> restrictions on transfers to some schools in governorates that recorded high cheating rates or saw incidents involving the intimidation of teachers. <\/span><\/p>\n

In recent years, <\/span>entire exam centres<\/span><\/a> in several governorates recorded high and closely similar marks, and many of the students at these centres belong to well-known families.<\/span><\/p>\n

In another indicator of the spread of cheating, first-year results at a number of <\/span>faculties of medicine<\/span><\/a> revealed high failure rates among students, suggesting that they had entered these faculties <\/span>undeservedly<\/span><\/a> and had cost outstanding students the chance to enrol, and cost society the graduation of a good doctor to serve citizens.<\/span><\/p>\n

The year 2023 saw<\/a> high failure rates among medical students at three universities. At Qena University, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dr Ali Abdel Rahman, announced that 70% of first-year students had failed, while the pass rate stood at only 28%, noting that the curricula and assessment methods had not changed from previous years, in which the pass rate was no lower than 90%.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Likewise, the pass rate at the Faculty of Medicine at South Valley University <\/span>stood<\/span><\/a> at only 28.5%, according to statements by the university’s president, Dr Youssef El-Gharbawy, who explained that a large number of those admitted to the Faculty of Medicine came from schools whose students’ results had been withheld because of mass cheating, and noted that the students who failed the first year cannot read or write English well.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Assiut University, the failure <\/span>rate<\/span><\/a> among first-year students at the Faculty of Medicine reached 60%, some of them Egyptians and others Sudanese, according to statements by Dr Alaa Attia, dean of the Assiut Faculty of Medicine, while the dean <\/span>described<\/span><\/a> what happened as the natural harvest of the spread of cheating in the 2022 Thanaweya Amma examinations.<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Mohamed Abdel Latif, Minister of Education and Technical Education, affirmed, as all education ministers customarily do, that there <\/span>will not be<\/span><\/a> a single “children of the elite” exam centre this year, and that if any information spreads about such a centre, he will be inside it himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Commenting, education expert Assem Hegazy says that the results of students at faculties of medicine mark the beginning of the harvest of cheating in Thanaweya Amma, pointing out that the culture of joining faculties of medicine must be confronted through a multidisciplinary national campaign presented by representatives of all segments of society, lawyers, clerics, artists and others, running for a long period across various media, with the aim of persuading people that all fields are needed by society, and that it is better for a student to enter the faculty that suits his inclinations and abilities, rather than to please his family by entering a faculty with high social prestige.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hegazy adds that the difficulty of the exams and the pressure they put on students is sometimes intended and healthy, in order to sort out the students qualified to enter each field, since what awaits students after Thanaweya Amma is far harder, commenting: “How can a student who breaks down over the difficulty of a Thanaweya Amma question hold up amid the emergency cases in hospitals as a doctor?”.<\/span><\/p>\n

The former ministry official says that the biggest lesson for the parents of Thanaweya Amma students who incite them to cheat is that their children will not get past the first year at the Faculty of Medicine, so why do they not encourage them to enter the faculties that suit their abilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is worth noting that in 2025, more than 451,000 students <\/span>sat<\/span><\/a> the exam in the Science (Sciences) stream, which qualifies for the group of medical faculties, out of a total of 785,000 students who sat the Thanaweya Amma examinations that year, a proportion exceeding 57%, which explains the difficulty of the Science stream exams, in order to sort students according to the requirements of university admissions coordination.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

The “Education” Ministry’s Figures Do Not Reflect the Truth<\/b><\/h1>\n

Every year, when the Thanaweya Amma results are announced, the Ministry of Education and Technical Education announces the number of cheating cases officially caught throughout the exam period. These numbers usually range from dozens to hundreds, but in reality they do not reflect the true number of cases that managed to cheat.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, the Ministry of Education’s statistical report, which it announced with the Thanaweya Amma results for the 2024 academic year, <\/span>revealed<\/span><\/a> that 1,061 cheating cases had been investigated, with the governorates of Dakahlia and Giza at the top of the governorates where cases were caught.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2025, however, the Ministry of Education did not announce to the media the statistics on the number of cases referred to legal affairs for cheating. But the statistical analysis <\/a>of the Thanaweya Amma results, which circulates every year and includes entire exam centres whose students obtained high marks, revealed that the figures presented by the ministry are far removed from reality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many ministries, such as the <\/span>Interior<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Communications<\/span><\/a> ministries, cooperate with the Ministry of Education in securing exam centres, distributing questions, and tracking secret cheating groups on messaging apps, but there is a <\/span>proposal<\/span><\/a> put forward every year for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to cut off the internet at exam centres during the exam period, which meets with continued rejection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last May, the National Telecom Regulatory Authority affirmed that internet service <\/span>would not be cut<\/span><\/a> during the Thanaweya Amma examinations, pointing out that uninterrupted internet services are a particular priority given the growing reliance on digital services, and that any disruption of the service could affect the interests of citizens and institutions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Education expert Dr Mohamed Kamal <\/span>attacked<\/span><\/a> the head of the Telecom Regulatory Authority after his statement that the internet would not be cut during the Thanaweya Amma examinations, calling for his dismissal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kamal pointed out that over the years the Ministry of Communications has failed to confront the technical side of cheating in exams and has been unable to shut down electronic cheating pages and groups, and in the end reassures students who want to cheat that the network will be available.<\/span><\/p>\n

This June, MP Emad El-Ghoneimy, a member of the House of Representatives, <\/span>renewed<\/span><\/a> his request to submit an urgent statement to Counsellor Hisham Badawi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, regarding what he described as the lack of sufficient coordination and cooperation between the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Education, calling for the necessary measures to be taken to curb electronic cheating during the Thanaweya Amma examinations.<\/span><\/p>\n

El-Ghoneimy stressed that confronting electronic cheating requires exceptional technical measures during the exam period, including jamming or blocking internet services in the vicinity of schools that house Thanaweya Amma exam centres, during exam hours only, in a way that guarantees the principle of equal opportunity among students.<\/span><\/p>\n

He noted that the spread of modern cheating devices represents a real challenge to the examination system, pointing to a rise in sales of these devices during the first week of this month, which calls for decisive action to limit their use inside exam centres.<\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast, Dr Tamer Shawky, an education expert and professor of educational psychology at the Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University, says that the proposal to cut off the internet at exam centres may seem the optimal way to confront electronic cheating, but only on the surface; in reality it is a solution that does not work legislatively or practically, because schools are scattered across the country and adjoin residential buildings and companies, so cutting off the internet deprives individuals of their right to use digital devices and disrupts companies’ business.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shawky adds to Zawia3 that there is another proposal in the same vein, namely setting aside Fridays and Saturdays for the Thanaweya Amma examinations, pointing out that this too is an impractical solution, because it would stretch the exam period to two months, and while Friday and Saturday are days off in Egypt, they are not days off in other countries, which would affect internet-related business.<\/span><\/p>\n

He notes that there is a middle-ground solution, namely using limited-range jamming devices inside exam centres, affirming that the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology is capable of implementing this solution, in addition to using high-precision equipment to trace the sources of devices that publish exam questions from inside Thanaweya Amma exam centres and reach them as quickly as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

The education expert offers a third solution, namely the swift closure of the electronic cheating pages that keep appearing on the internet, pointing out that artificial intelligence has made this much easier.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

The Baccalaureate: A Supporting Solution That Will Not Prevent Cheating<\/b><\/h1>\n

As of the past academic year 2025\/2026, the Ministry of Education and Technical Education began applying the <\/span>Egyptian Baccalaureate system<\/span><\/a> as an optional alternative to the Thanaweya Amma system. This system is distinguished by a multiple-attempt exam, “improvement”, instead of the single-attempt system represented by Thanaweya Amma.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>Minister<\/span><\/a> of Education promoted the Baccalaureate system as one that eases the burden on students and parents, which helps reduce cheating in exams, because the student knows that if he misses the exam opportunity in any subject he will have another chance within two months, with the full exam mark available, and two further chances the following year, with the possibility of retaking the exam in subjects he passed but with a lower score than required.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under the Thanaweya Amma system, students sit the first-round exam for the full mark, and in the event of <\/span>failing<\/span><\/a> and sitting the second-round exam, passing it earns the pass mark only, and the student is not entitled to repeat the year for the subject’s full mark except in the failed subjects only, with no chance of improvement.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this regard, the former Ministry of Education official says that the best thing about the Egyptian Baccalaureate system is the improvement system, because the single-attempt system puts enormous pressure on students; any emergency during the exam period could wreck their future, and many outstanding students have been wronged by the single-attempt system.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the improvement system pushing up students’ total scores and, consequently, university admission cut-offs, the source said that coordination is a fixed standard, and Thanaweya Amma is a marathon in which the one with the highest score has the greatest chance; therefore it does not harm students whether the Faculty of Medicine accepts a total of 90% or 80%, since in the end the top students are the ones who will be admitted to this faculty.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr Assem Hegazy, however, believes that the Baccalaureate system may help reduce the rate of cheating but will not prevent it, because the culture of cheating exists and our society is fond of comparisons, so the student who obtained a high total on the first attempt will be favoured, affirming that sitting a Thanaweya Amma exam twice within two months is extremely arduous for students and they will only resort to it in special cases.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hegazy notes that equal opportunity will not be achieved and cheating will not be confronted unless electronic tests are applied, through question banks that give students exams that differ in their questions but are equivalent in difficulty, like the digital transformation exams, but this requires major preparations and time.<\/span><\/p>\n

He affirms that as long as there is a means that opens the door to cheating, it will continue, and all efforts aim only to limit it, despite their great cost to the state, on top of the basic cost of organisation, commenting: “Despite the existence of the death penalty for the crime of murder, society still sees such crimes; violations are part of the nature of any human society.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the budget for the Thanaweya Amma examinations has not been announced in recent years, it exceeded the <\/span>billion<\/span><\/a>-pound mark in the 2021\/2022 academic year, for organisation and security, when the number of students was only 650,000, not 900,000 as is the case this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

The education expert proposes imposing large fines on parents whose children are caught cheating, in addition to applying the <\/span>law<\/span><\/a> that bars the student from sitting the exam in one or more subjects and punishes with imprisonment and fines anyone who contributes to or facilitates cheating.<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, the former Ministry of Education official affirms that the Thanaweya Amma examinations are a struggle between the Ministry of Education on one side and the group that wants to cheat and justifies it on the other, and success in organising them lies in achieving a high level of discipline and equal opportunity among students, but 100% will not be achieved.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The budget for the Thanaweya Amma examinations exceeded one billion pounds in 2022, when there were 650,000 students, and it is rising this year with 921,000 students, while cheating earpieces are sold openly online and faculties of medicine record failure rates of up to 70% among students who entered them undeservedly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[413],"tags":[],"kateb":[15844],"class_list":["post-16902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-en","kateb-yasmin-ali"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/\u062a\u0639\u0644\u064a\u0645-\u062f\u0627\u062e\u0644\u064a\u0629.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16902"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23991,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16902\/revisions\/23991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16902"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=16902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}