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Secondary Exam Results In India Mean An SMS Flood
syrinje writes "The Times of India reported that Indian high-school seniors who took the exams conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education sent more than a Million SMS messages within a 11 hour period to query the result database and receive detailed examination results. In addition making the results available to cellphone users, the CBSE has also published the results online at a dedicated web-site . Since the results were announced on the weekend, students would otherwise have had to wait for Monday to get their results from their schools. A spokesperson for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited , one of the operators involved in setting up the SMS result system estimated that they handled 100,000 messages per hour during the day on Sunday and said that "There was no problem in the network due to the heavy SMS traffic and we were able to give subjectwise marks to the students"."
New Year 2003/4 in the UK, 111 MILLION SMSs were sent between midnight 31 December and midnight 1 January, an average of 4.625 million/hour. In reality the first couple of minutes around 37.2 million were sent.
See here for details.
While this may sound surprising to the western world, kids in India are under tremendous social, parental and peer pressure to perform well in exams, especially the Secondary (high school( exams, and for several reasons:
1. Your chances of getting even your application considered for admission in any college depend entirely upon the Secondary school results.
2. The Seconday exam results are seen as a measure of success and dedication of not only the kid, but the parents as well. Unlike the developed countries, it is extremely difficult for anyone to find a job without a college education. There aren't all that many alternative, yet well-paying streams to choose from.
3. With a population of a billion, competition is fierce over every single seat in every college. There are instances where more than 100 students compete for a single place, and even a tenth of a difference in high-school percentage can make a difference
4. Parents as well the kids are under pressure to make a showing of their emphasis and sincerity towards education. It is almost unthinkable for a parents that their kid would fail in Secondary - that's virtually a stigma on the entire family.
And finally, in typical Indian fashion, there are hearty celebrations and distribution of sweets if the kids score well (the definition of "well" means anything over 80 or 85%)
http://efil.blogspot.com/
You are right. It is a privacy issue. But, here, in India, traditionally, the entire spreadsheet of all students is put up in a public place in the institute (college, school, board, wherever) for all to see. Therefore, it is not a big issue for somebody who has grown up here.