Ten candidates were caught cheating in the Baccalaureate exam in the specialty subject taken on June 14 and thus were asked to leave the classroom. Also, the National Anticorruption Center carried out searches at a Baccalaureate center in Chisinau because two observers there were suspected of traffic of influence, IPN reports.

The Center said this is the Baccalaureate center set up at the Theoretical Lyceum “Elena Alistar”. A teacher and a secretary acting as observers are suspected of promising students to facilitate the exam for them by exerting influence on decision makers of the Baccalaureate center. These offered to give them earphones by which the answers to the tests were to be dictated to them.

The observers also suggested replacing a student with a competent person so that this took the exam instead of the student, by falsifying the identity card of the candidate. These asked €2,700 from two students for helping them pass the exams. The money was transmitted under the control of anticorruption officers. This was found in the offices and at the homes of the observers during searches.

The observers are to be escorted to the National Anticorruption Center for questioning. A criminal case over traffic of influence was started against them. They face up to six years in jail.

In a press briefing, the director of the National Agency for Curriculum and Assessment Anatol Topala said that no cases of test posting on the Internet were reported today. As to the publication on the Internet of the answers to the tests in the foreign language taken on June 10, Topala said the head of the Baccalaureate center, two secretaries and two assistants were removed from these posts. “The assistants who allowed photographing the tests that day will not have the right to become involved in any type of assessment and to take part in assessment or examination commissions,” he stated.

Also, the Ungheni Education Division will penalize the director of the Theoretical Lyceum “Alexandr Pushkin” of Ungheni with severe reprimand. The assistants will be fired, while the two secretaries will receive severe reprimand.

The next Baccalaureate exam, of one’s choice, will be sat on June 17.