Student unrest sweeps India, Portugal and Mexico as grievances and pressure for good grades in tough job market collide<\/p>\n
Families with teenagers in education know the private, hidden pain of exam season. But this year, what might have been a summer of quiet family anxiety has erupted in several countries into public unrest.<\/p>\n
Exam-related turmoil has led to mass student protests in Mexico after nearly 60,000 university applicants were forced to resit tests amid suspected cheating, while Portugal\u2019s disastrous attempt to digitise school exam marking sparked the country\u2019s worst education crisis in decades.<\/p>\n
By far the largest and most ground-shaking incident was in India, however, where an exam paper leak affected millions of students and was linked to more than a dozen students taking their own lives. The scandal forced the education minister to resign, and challenged the government\u2019s hold over its 1.4 billion citizens.<\/p>\n
Why does this exam season seem to be particularly tense and volatile? Experts say the growth of AI cheating and attempts by academic institutions to digitise examinations are at the heart of the issue. When coupled with the high stakes of good grades in an increasingly precarious global economy, the result can be explosive.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would seem that exams are getting more fraught on a global scale,\u201d said Dr Sarah Eaton of the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. \u201cThe pressure on young people has absolutely changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen the economic situation change around the world in the last decade. And the results of one examination determining a person\u2019s entire future really creates untenable pressure on young people,\u201d said Eaton, a leading expert on academic ethics. \u201cThis is a tragedy when young people are dying by suicide because of an examination outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
When a single test can determine a young person\u2019s entire future, cheating is no longer just about individuals but becomes a systematic issue, said Eaton. This is compounded when illicit commercial industries, known as the \u201ceducation mafia\u201d, exploit student desperation by stealing and then selling exam papers, something that has become widespread in India and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Students from across India joined the mass demonstrations led by the Cockroach Janta party, a youth-led protest campaign that began as an online satirical joke and grew into a nationwide outcry that poses an unprecedented challenge to Narendra Modi\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get large-scale fraud combined with systemic failure, there\u2019s almost a guarantee of a breakdown of public trust,\u201d said Eaton. \u201cAnd once that trust is broken, it\u2019s almost impossible to regain. I can\u2019t imagine how India is going to deal with this, just given the levels of corruption and fraud that we\u2019ve seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Portugal, the national fallout from a failed push by its education minister, Fernando Alexandre, to fully digitise the exam marking process has landed the government in a crisis. Parents, teachers, and students have been protesting, demanding Alexandre\u2019s resignation after his policy resulted in serious marking errors.<\/p>\n
Similar demonstrations took place in Mexico. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam), the country\u2019s most prestigious university, announced that due to abnormally high marks in entrance exam results, which raised suspicions of widespread cheating, approximately 58,000 students would have to retake the exam.<\/p>\n
Schools worldwide are rushing to deal with AI use by students, either through bans or teaching AI literacy and ethics to pupils. Denmark announced this month that from the new term, teenagers would have to make a verbal defence of their written essays to combat AI cheating.<\/p>\n
Eaton has implemented similar reforms in her class. \u201cAI can generate a perfect essay in seconds. So an essay is no longer a viable way to demonstrate students\u2019 learning,\u201d she said. \u201cWe should let it die with dignity and find other ways to assess student learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Eaton\u2019s view, cheating is a \u201chuman problem\u201d and so grading and assessing student learning has historically also been a human responsibility, which she said cannot easily be off-loaded to the latest tech.<\/p>\n