Police are hunting for a group of students at the heart of an exam cheating scam.

Officers investigating allegations of cheating in the annual college entrance exam in Yangxian County, Shaanxi Province, in northwest China, said they hope to locate four second-grade students who tried to sit the exam in the place of graduating third-grade students.

Liu Xiaoming, spokesman for the investigation group, yesterday told China Daily that "local government and education departments concerned have been paying great attention to the case, and carried out their own three-day investigation from June 9 to 11 after the cheating was exposed."

Liu is also an official with the government of Hanzhong municipality, which has jurisdiction in the county.

However the police investigation has run into difficulty tracking down the second-grade students, said Liu because their parents refused to reveal where they are.

On Thursday, Hanzhong's local government announced that four students had been caught taking the examination in place of others in an exam hall in Yangxian County, the previous day. They were immediately expelled from the exam.

An initial investigation found the four students were all second-grade students at Yangxian High School.

A government official said police are now trying to determine whether the attempted exam fraud was an organized operation, or if the students arranged it themselves.

The four students' parents said their children took part in the exam, but did not know who they were sitting it for, or who was behind the scam.

Li Xiansheng, whose son is involved, said his son a star pupil in the second-grade was told by teachers that he could sit this year's college entrance exam as a trial for next year.

Usually the exam is for graduating third-grade students only.

"We only know we were given a chance to have a try for next year's examination. My son feels terrible about being duped, and worries he will not be allowed to take part in next year's exam," Li said.

Bribe claims

Local media, including Chinese Business View, quoted some students involved in the scam as saying that some 20 excellent second-grade students were organized by the high school to sit the exam on behalf of graduating students.

A student who would not give his name added that "the measure has been taken for years."

Another source quoted by the paper claimed school leaders and teachers were bribed by graduating students to arrange for talented second-graders to sit the exam for them.

The school refused to comment on the case and the local government would not confirm the allegations, stressing that the investigation is ongoing. However the admissions office of Yangxian confirmed that some 40 students did not take part in the exam without reason on June 8, after the scam was exposed.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a local high school teacher said it was not normal for so many students not to take part in the exam without proper excuses.

Zhao Zhengju, an educational expert at Shaanxi Normal University, said the spread of cheating in recent years showed that the exam procedure was flawed and stern measures should be introduced.

"Involving the local police in the investigation indicates that this case did not only violate exam disciplines, but also broke the law," the expert said.

(China Daily June 13, 2006)