China Is Cracking Down On Cheating High School Exam Takers With Drones, Facial Recognition

“Gaokao” week in China is a stressful time for students taking college entrance exams (like the SAT or ACT in the United States) as students have high hopes of garnering acceptance to a top university and eventually landing a white collar job. With such high stakes some students, however, find themselves resorting to desperate measures for good scores.

With cheating being more prevalent during "Gaokao" week, authorities are cracking down on the widespread problem among the teen students who take the two-day exam each year. After years of students using sophisticated technology like small ear pieces and wireless devices designed to look like ordinary belts, pencil erasers and more to cheat, authorities are responding with some counteractive technology. They’re using drones, facial recognition software, metal detectors and more to try to eliminate cheating in all forms, reports Reuters.

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Some provinces in the country require that students go through fingerprint scans as well as facial recognition scans just to get into the exam. This is to prevent another student posing as the teen who should be taking the exam. This is in addition to metal detectors and electronic detectors to find any device the student may have hidden away. Once students make it into the exam authorities are doing what they can to block or scramble cell service or any other means of communication possible cheaters may be using to communicate with a possible accomplice. The test questions also vary from province to province, which is designed to help cut down on the possibility of cheating.

Several years ago when authorities realized how common it was for students to cheat on the exams they instituted a law that makes the offense punishable by up to seven years in jail.

That law was passed in the fall of 2015 and before the exam was even given (beginning Tuesday) 52 people had already been arrested for cheating. It’s not just cheating students who face the charges, people who help them as their accomplices can also be jailed. Some universities were even going as far as to not allow their current students to take off from class during the exam period to ensure they weren’t available to help the test takers cheat, Reuters reports.

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The exams are taken so seriously nation-wide that traffic is diverted from areas where student are taking the test and any construction is also stopped temporarily as to not distract any of the students. In addition to the millions of students taking the exam this year, one robot will be taking the exam as well to see how it can compete with human intelligence. The AI-MATHS robot will only take the math portion of the exam, it’s been trained to solve thousands of exam questions, according to Quartz.