Education officials in exam-cheating scandal indicted

Police escort Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nga of the provincial Department of Education's Division of Examination and Quality Management to her house for an inspection. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The People’s Procuracy in the northern mountainous province of Sơn La has issued an indictment against eight people involved in a high-school exam cheating scandal.

The indictment to pursue criminal proceedings will be submitted to the court. 

The eight defendants in the case have been accused under the Criminal Code of abusing power while performing their official duties.

Among the accused are high-ranking education officials, including Trần Xuân Yến, former deputy director of the provincial Department of Education and Training.

Yến has also held multiples roles as a member of the exam steering board, vice chairman of the provincial exam board, standing deputy head of the test-marking board, and head of the multiple-choice test-marking group. 

Also accused are Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nga and Nguyễn Thanh Nhàn from the provincial education department’s Division of Examination and Quality Management, and Lò Văn Huynh, head of the division and a member of the examination board.

Other defendants include Đặng Hữu Thủy, former vice principal at Tô Hiệu High School; Cầm Thị Bun Sọn, former deputy director of the Division of Political Ideology; and Đinh Hải Sơn and Đỗ Khắc Hưng, former officials of the Internal Political Security Division of the provincial police.

According to the indictment, the defendants abused their power to increase the exam scores of 44 students. Some of them committed the violations because of their personal relationships with students and students’ relatives, it said.

The defendants picked up multiple choice tests and made modifications, and when the inspection team came, they deleted computer data to conceal their actions, the indictment said.

Last year, Sơn La Province had more than 10,300 students participating in the national high school graduation exam with an average score of 4.21, the lowest in the country.

The rate of students in Sơn La achieving nine points or more in maths and physics, however, outnumbered that of other localities that traditionally perform better.

The abnormal scores prompted the police to conduct an investigation into the exam marking process, which was found to have multiple cases of cheating.

Two other northern provinces, Hà Giang and Hòa Bình, also had paper test results increased in last year’s national high school exam.

The People’s Court of Hà Giang Province will open its first-instance court trial for five defendants involved in the cheating scandal in mid-July, Nguyễn Thị Lan Anh, Chief Justice of the provincial People’s Court, said.

Five people accused of abusing power while performing duties are former education officials of the province, including Triệu Thị Chính and Phạm Văn Khuông, former deputy directors of the provincial Department of Education and Training.

They took advantage of faults in the multiple-choice test-marking software to conduct exam fraud and increased the scores of 107 students, an investigation found. — VNS