Militias and bribes tip scales as Iraqis take final exams

Baghdad: Ehab Thaer could not afford the bribes some of his friends at his central Baghdad high school paid for a preview of final exam questions. He wishes instead that he could have benefited from a different tip to the scale: a visit by militias to force proctors to let him cheat.

Over the past two weeks, Iraq has seen an unprecedented level of interference by militias and insurgents as students have taken national exams for middle and high school diplomas. Cheating and bribing have also marred the process - as have threats by parents to uncooperative teachers.

Iraq's schools and universities were once the pride of the Arab world. But one expert says that what has happened inside exam halls, along with the plummeting standards of the education system, are further symptoms of the systematic unravelling of Iraqi society and its institutions. "There is real terror going on at some of these exams," says Asma Jamil, a sociologist at Baghdad University, adding that students feel that Iraq's instability gives them the right to cheat, while armed groups want to win the sympathy of the public.

Social decay

"It's a result of greater social decay," she says, "and it feeds it by graduating a generation of aggressive, sometimes extremist, students who have very little capability for critical thinking."

The Ministry of Education recently solicited solutions to the problem from her and other experts, she says, but that there has been little follow-up. "We are witnessing," she says, "the complete collapse of the education system."

Education Minister Khudayer Al Khuzaie says that all the talk of violations at exam centres were rumours and part of a smear campaign.

According to Asma, the 1970s and '80s saw great strides that set Iraq apart in the region. The system started declining in the 1990s after the first Gulf War, when economic sanctions and poverty prompted some officials to sell exam questions or award fictitious degrees.

One student, who did not wish to give his name, says that he had accompanied five friends, including the son of a former minister, to the principal's house. "I saw them writing their names on the dollar bills they handed to the principal," he charges.

A teacher in Baiyaa, who gave her name as Umm Sarah, says militiamen stormed into her school and ordered proctors out of one exam. "One had a pistol under his shirt. We were terrified," she says.

In a separate incident, she says, parents confronted her and others and were about to beat them for not allowing cheating, before being rescued by a police patrol.