A deputy agriculture bureau chief in Yanggu, Shandong province, who got more than 23 students to take the national college entrance exam for other students in Gansu province, has surrendered to police.

Huo Jigang had been on the police wanted list for more than a month. He surrendered on Sunday and was taken Tianshui, Gansu province.

Nine people connected with exam scandal are now in police custody. On Sunday, three police officers and a civilian were arrested in Tianshui.

Lanzhou Morning News reported that the four made fake ID cards for the students from Shandong province.

Preliminary investigations by the Tianshui government revealed that Huo, a former chemistry teacher at a top high school in Yanggu, and his wife Zhang Yuru, hatched a plan for their son and other students to sit for the exam on behalf of others.

They made a number of fake documents for exam registration with the help of police officers and teachers.

The documents included household registration and ID cards of a county or city where the student should lived for at least three years.

Because of different educational standards, some students try to sit for the exam in other counties to boost their chances of gaining entry to a university.

In some cases, students are paid to sit the exam for others.

On June 7, the first day of the two-day annual national college entrance exam, a student changed his name on an exam paper and aroused the suspicions of an envigilator.

An investigation found that a total of 23 students from the Yanggu No 1 High School had taken the exam for other students.

They were all recruited by Huo and two teachers, Wan Luming, director of the enrolling office of Tianshui's Maiji district, said.

The Ministry of Education said last week that with new technology and tighter supervision, only 2,654 students were found to have violated the rules, 2.6 for every 10,000 students, the lowest since the country reintroduced the exam in 1977.

(China Daily July 1, 2008)