It seems like cheating in school is a really serious problem in Iraq that the Government has to apply such a strong measure to stop it. 

Let’s take a look at the situation

According to data from DYN Research, Iraq has been shutting down the country’s entire internet repeatedly to prevent students from cheating on their exams. The internet access was blocked for 3 hours on Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning this week, from 5AM to 8AM local time. In Iraq, education is only up to sixth grade. Students who fail on exam will be expelled from school. Student’s study result is substantial to their prospect and life-long, that explains why students are highly motivated to get high grade or pass the exam at least-and to cheat.

According to Education Ministry spokeswoman Hadeel al-Ameri, people who try to leak the questions will be arrested by Security departments. ”And there were few people in the Education Ministry who used to leak these questions”, al-Ameri said. The extreme measures are a bid to ensure that some of the country’s 600,000 primary school students could not access answers purchased ahead of national standardized tests, al-Ameri said.”We asked the Communications Ministry to shut off Internet services because we knew that some students — those who are lazy — started to use the Internet trying to get answers,” she added.

There were a Facebook group called “Leaking the Final Central Exams Question 2015” running by some anomymous administrators. Lots of students know and “buy” their exam question and answer from this group. A 16 years old student from Baghdad described how she was sent exam answers last year after joining this group: “They sent me three accurate lists of questions that came in the exams — chemistry, physics and Islamic studies,” she said. “The rest five exams they sent me only three questions out of the six questions.” The price for each of her exams was 20 Iraqi dinars (around $18). Though the result wasn’t good as expected, she said that she would still cheat in the future as long as she have a chance to do it.

Another measure for Iraq?

Though cheating is always student’s favorite thing and they always find a way to do it. But is it too dramatic to shut down the country’s entire internet? Yes of course the Iraq government could use another measure like banning mobile phones or installing jammer to prevent students from accessing leaked exam answers via Internet. But then somebody said “how about just shutting down the Internet?”, and here we go.