Cheating on exam a ‘root of corruption': KPK leader

Cheating in this week’s National Examination is “one of the roots of corruption practice in the country” and school students should avoid doing so, a senior official of the anti-graft agency has warned.
Deputy Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) chief Bambang Widjojanto said Monday that students must be “brave enough” to take the exams “without any devious tricks.”
“Who we are today reflects who we are in the future. Cheating during an exam is an atrocious thing to do. It will sabotage your future,” Bambang said in a text message to The Jakarta Post.
Education expert Arief Rahman echoed Bambang’s statement, adding that any form of dishonesty, including cheating, might trigger fraudulent practices when they become older.
“Basically, any dishonest act is part of one group, let it be cheating, adultery or corruption,” he said in a telephone interview.
Arief acknowledged that the battle against cheating in exams was difficult. He recalled the case of a whistle-blower who revealed cheating in East Java in last year. Siami was shunned by her neighbors after disclosing cheating during national exams at her son’s school in Gadel, Surabaya.
“Fighting against fraudulent practices has never been easy, even since the colonial era. The thing is, we must accustom our society to shrug off the practice because cheating has become systemic and cultural,” he added.
A total of 2,580,446 high school students are sitting the National Examination from Monday to Thursday.
In order to pass the exam, students have to score a minimum of 4 in each subject and their average score in the test, their school exams and reports should be above 5.5.
Education and Culture Minister Mohammad Nuh said his team believes that this year’s exam would be “clean” and “reliable”.

Source : The Jakarta Post