When
it comes to cheating, the school authorities will always ensure that
they go to a lot of lengths to prevent exam malpractices — some check to
see if the answers have been scribbled on parts of their body/Math
set/calculator/four figure table while others collect their phones— but
one country has taken an extreme approach by completely shutting down
the country’s internet in a bid to keep students from cheating.

On
Tuesday, while Ethiopian students (comprising of 1.2 million 10th
graders and additional 300,000+ 12th-grade students) were preparing to
sit for exams on Wednesday, the country’s internet was shut down to
prevent exam leaks.

Ethiopia
reportedly cutoff internet -for z 3rd time in 12 months -fearing
activists will leak a scheduled national exam as they did last yr. https://t.co/1vPi3zrXAg

— Mohammed Ademo (@OPride) May 30, 2017

The move isn’t surprising because this is the second year that such an action has been taken.
Now,
what is surprising is the fact that shutting down the internet may not
have a huge difference when it comes to exam malpractice because
Ethiopia has one of the lowest
internet and mobile connectivity rates in the world (Quartz), as a
matter of fact, less than 4% of the population has internet access.

So, Ethiopia:

If
you were to ask me, I don’t think the internet spreading the leaked
exams is the issue, the real issue is the fact that the exams are leaked
in the first place.