Exams likely leaked after leaving us: Obec
Secretary-General of the Office of Basic Education Commission (Obec) Chinnapat Bhumirat yesterday told the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) that the leak of exam papers for teacher-assistants was unlikely to have come from his agency as their pro
Chinnapat yesterday met for several hours with the DSI’s corruption prevention and suppression centre director Thanin Prempree to testify on the alleged exam cheating.
After the meeting, Thanin told reporters that as well as oral testimony, Chinnapat also submitted 600 pages of related documents to the DSI on points including the order to centralise the exam process rather than leave it to the educational zones, as in the past.
Thanin said the DSI would next week invite committees involved in the production of the exam papers, as well as representatives from the printing house, Chan Wanich Security Printing, to gather more information. The DSI will also check on the four people who had access codes to the exam-question database, which contained about 15,000 questions. The investigation will also cover the printing house and Thai Post, which delivered the papers to each educational zone, in a bid to find the source of the leak.
For the probe into some 400 “unusually high” exam scores, Thanin said the DSI would employ the expertise of former Educational Ministry inspector-general Chob Leechor and former deputy dean of Surat Thani Rajabhat University Phitsanu Fongsri to help analyse the test-takers’ scores.
Chinnapat said the centralisation of exams had come in response to the teacher civil service educational personnel commission’s resolution on April 5, 2012.
Playing down the suspicion that the papers were leaked from the central administration, Chinnapat said Obec had the authority to make and access the exam-question database to produce papers, but the database was secure. Chan Wanich Security Printing Co had access codes, he said.
He insisted that no officials had a chance to see original copies of the exams before they were sealed and sent to the educational zones. He said the answers were stored in a computer notebook kept in a safe, which a committee accessed two days after the exams in order to get the correct answers for Chan Wanich Security Printing to deliver to the zones. He said the system was well guarded.
Chinnapat said an Obec-assigned panel’s initial findings that the unusually high scores had come in just five to eight subjects rather than all 30 suggested the leak might have occurred after the papers were delivered to the educational zones. He said the probe would be completed by next week.
