KUWAIT CITY, April 18: The secret printing press in the Ministry of Education is working on printing the exams for the secondary grades (tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades) in scientific, literary and religious education sections in the old traditional way. The papers are printed without any new additions that distinguish educational zones or schools from each other, but it is unified for all Kuwaiti schools with the increase in the number of proposed models for the end-of-year exams and the second round in order to ensure there is no leakage, reports Al-Rai daily.

According to an educational source, the secret printing press was fortified with stricter precautionary measures, starting with selecting its members, ensuring that surveillance cameras work, and taking written pledges from its employees to bear full criminal responsibility in the event of a leak or disclosure of privacy. He said, “All its employees are considered trustworthy in the educational community, and no one else will be allowed to enter the press except for the Minister of Education, the undersecretary of the Ministry of Education, and the assistant undersecretary for Public Education.”

Retracted
The source explained that the ministry retracted some of the proposals it was studying to give some privacy to test papers and track leakage processes, if any, including adding a watermark to each school to know the source of leakage in the event of its occurrence. However, this would mean printing dozens of watermarks and withdrawing thousands of papers, which is a costly procedure for the ministry. It had previously canceled the idea of applying more than one model in one committee to prevent fraud due to problems in withdrawing exams and in the correction mechanism.

The source said, “The educational zones are preparing to launch awareness and guidance campaigns to confront the scourge of exams that has cracked the educational head, which is the phenomenon of cheating. They are preparing some proposed treatment plans and programs to confront this phenomenon and eliminate it in all examination committees.” In addition, the source affirmed that the technical guidance for the study subjects had nominated candidates to work in the high school examination control, either in correction committees, or for estimating grades, or carrying out horizontal and vertical review, adding that some subjects exceeded 1,000 male and female correctors for the 12th grade exams alone.