China's Ministry of Education once again refuted reports on the leak of national exam papers on post-graduation study on Sunday, after an Internet rumor about a national exam on English was put down in December.

"No problem was revealed during the exam and it has smoothly concluded," a senior official with the ministry said Sunday.

On Sunday afternoon when the post-graduation study was to conclude, reports on the leak of English and politics papers for the exam were spread quickly in the cyber space.

The reports claimed that some questions on the papers were totally the same as those in pre-exam training courses. The Ministry of Education immediately investigated and confirmed that all the papers were strictly printed, transported and kept well before the exam.

"Questions on the papers were designed on the basis of the national examination data base," the official said.

A similar case occurred in December when a national exam on English was held. A netizen named "Bosaidong" posted a misleading note of "exposing the writing section of the exam paper" before the exam started to attract eyeballs.

Almost half an hour after the exam began, he got to know the true question for the writing section and reworked on his note, giving the impression that the exam paper had been leaked beforehand.

"Such false reports have severely disturbed the exams' order, damaged the fame of national exams, and disturbed social stability," the official said, indicating that some people made use of the holes on the Internet to fabricate a gloss on "leak of exam papers."

Insiders said such false reports on the Internet were possibly a result of malignant competition among managers of training courses.

A total of 1.246 million people took the national exam for post-graduation study from Jan. 10 to 11.

(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2009)