Student arrested for leaking Thanaweya Amma exams on Facebook

A Thanaweya Amma student was arrested on Friday for reportedly leaking final exams on a Facebook page called “Shaw Ming Helps Thanaweyya Amma Students Cheat.” The defendant is a high school student who lives in Alexandria's Shakous district.

Karim Ashraf, 18, was arrested at his home, where police also confiscated his router and laptop. According to reports, the computer contained pictures of Thanaweya Amma exams and their answers.

Privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that the Facebook page posts images of exams and their answers, and provides instructions to students on how to cheat during exams using cell phones. According to the newspaper, the defendant confessed to the charges filed against him.

More than 300,000 people follow the Facebook page, where exams are usually leaked one night before they are scheduled. In some cases, the exams and their answers are leaked just a few minutes before the test begins. There are several similar pages with the same name on Facebook – it is unclear if all or any of these are run by the same administrators.

In April, the Education Ministry was informed of attempts to leak Thanaweya Amma exams, which were allegedly orchestrated by former Brotherhood Education Minister Ibrahim Ghoneim.

Leaking test answers and other forms of cheating are widespread practices during Thanaweyya Amma exams, the scores of which determine college placement for students through a state-run system called “tanseeq.”

Last year, two university students were also arrested for leaking Thanaweya Amma exams on a Facebook page with the same name. One of the students, Mohamed Mostafa Abdel Gawad, was accused of running the page. However, following Abdel Gawad’s arrest, the page leaked the final statistics exam, indicating that there may be other people involved in the page’s administration.