For the first time in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDB) history, a time zone cheating has been reported. Students are accused of taking advantage of time zone variations to leak maths questions and numerous other papers on social media, giving their classmates who were taking the exam at a different time an unfair edge. Turkey is suspected to be the source of leak.
Leaked questions from a variety of IB papers, including business management, global politics, mathematics, physics, computer science, biology, and chemistry, have been discovered on Reddit and Telegram, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.
Time-Zone Cheating: Explained
When students in one time zone finish an exam and then post on social media what they recall about the questions before others take the test in different time zones, this is known as time zone cheating. The academic integrity policy of our IB forbids time zone cheating.
Indian students were less likely to benefit from the paper leak, according to the time zone difference. Still, there's a chance that students in Europe, the America, Singapore, Hong Kong may be benefited.
Board's stance on the matter
The International Baccalaureate (IB) revealed that a small percentage of students engaged in what they called "time zone cheating," minimising the scope of the activity.
"To date, there is no evidence of widespread cheating and we are confident that this activity remains at the fringes of what is otherwise a standard exam session," it said in a press release on Sunday.
However, the SCMP pointed out that there was evidence to the contrary, with leaked materials having been downloaded more than 45,000 times as of Sunday, which begged concerns about the severity of the problem.
'Paper 2 Math AA HL', 'Maths AA HL Questions', 'Business Management Paper 1', and 'Global Politics HL Paper 2' were the titles of the leaked IB test material documents that were downloaded thousands of times, says data from a downloading website. These four papers' examinations were administered from April 26 to May 2.
Students demand cancellation of this year's exam
Students are furious over the IB paper leaks, especially those who are taking examinations in Hong Kong right now. Exam cancellation requests have gotten louder, and internet petitions requesting equal or just correction have surfaced.
More than 3,000 people have signed an online petition asking the IB to either cancel this year's exam or guarantee justice for students who were not impacted by the leaks.
