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posted by mrpg on Sunday June 24 2018, @02:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-carrier dept.

As solutions go, it is certainly radical: in order to thwart a mass epidemic of cheating by students taking their school leaving exams, Algeria shut down the internet for up to three hours a day this week – for everyone.

[... The public telephone operator Algérie Telecom] published a timetable of the shutdown schedule: three one-hour blackouts, coinciding with the first hour of each baccalaureate exam, on Wednesday, and two each on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

[...] Cheating among the more than 700,000 students who take Algeria's bac was so widespread in 2016 that the education ministry declared several exams void and using new question papers.

[...] Algeria is not, however, the only country to take such radical steps during exam season: Syria, Iraq, Mauritania, Uzbekistan and several Indian states reportedly block access to the internet. Ethiopia shuts down social media.

Algeria blocks internet to prevent students cheating during exams


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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:19AM

    by looorg (578) on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:19AM (#697499)

    This does seem a bit excessive, also as pointed out it seems to happen in countries that tend to pull the off switch for the internet when the need arises -- even tho most nations could or would probably do that if needed. Wouldn't it just be easier to control the students, shield the room or put a jammer (depending on how it is organized this could be an issue to since it would require to many machines) there instead of turning the internet on and off for the entire country throughout the entire day for three hours. Just imagine that happening in a country where the internet is now a normal part of business, companies would go apeshit -- not to mention how the population would react to not getting their daily dosage of Google and the Facebook.

    Perhaps turning off the internet is just the easiest or simplest solution to the problem ...

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