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Ethiopia Turns Off Internet Nationwide as Students Sit Exams (theguardian.com)
Ethiopia shut down the internet yesterday ahead of a scheduled national examination that is underway in the country today. Social media users noted that the internet service was interrupted from around 7 pm on Tuesday -- reportedly to prevent exam leaks. About 1.2 million students are taking the grade 10 national exams, with another 288,000 preparing for the grade 12 university entrance exams that will take place next week. From a report: Outbound traffic from Ethiopia was shutdown around 4pm UK time on Tuesday, according to Google's transparency report, which registered Ethiopian visits to the company's sites plummeting over the evening. By Wednesday afternoon, access still had not been restored. Last year, activists leaked the papers for the country's 12th grade national exams, calling for the postponement of the papers due to a school shutdown in the regional state of Oromia. Now, the government appears to have taken the move to shut down internet access as a preventative measure.
In a lot of places, every student writes exams at the same time. Shutting down the internet for the 3-4 hours while every student writes exams is a cheap and easy way to keep them from cheating via Google.
It's not feasible in most Western nations because there's rarely a time where every single student is taking an exam, but a lot of places (especially places following the old British education system) every student has to sit down and write one massive end of year exam that basically counts for all the marks. Cheating is rampant because in the final years those exams dictate the next phase in your life - do you head off and become a common labourer, do you get a scholarship and get to attend university overseas, or do you get post-secondary education locally? And yes, suicide is also rampant - students who feel they failed their parents (i.e., did not live up to expectations, which are often "overseas university full scholarship") often feel they can't face the shame (or punishment) of getting anything less.
Hell, you know it's big when Amazon sells special "cheating watches" which are basically watches with an SD card slot - you load up the watch with your textbook and notes and such, and then wear it as a normal watch, but with the ability to skim through it like a mini eBook reader.