Thai authorities have taken the rather extreme action of banning all watches from university entrance examinations, after one student was found receiving text messages through his timepiece.
According to Reuters, students will now have to rely on wall clocks, with information about the mobile phone wrist watch sent out to exam centres across the country. "I have ordered the 18 examination centers nationwide to ban students wearing all kinds of watches to the exams this weekend," senior ministry official Sumate Yamnoon told reporters.
The Thai entrance exams are notoriously difficult, although cheating your way to success is by no means limited to one country.
UK keeping an eye on things
We spoke to the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (OCR) Examinations board, which told us that pupils are still caught smuggling mobiles into exams.
“We have very strict rules about things like this,” the spokesman told TechRadar. “Pupils are told they will be excluded from the paper if they are caught.
“But, every year, some people try to bring in mobile phones.
“I’ve not heard about mobile phone watches – that’s a new one to me, but our warning covers all communications devices so they would be included with that.”
Apparently, UK students can also receive an official warning if they leave their mobile phone in their bag and it goes off, disturbing others. They can also lose their marks on a paper if they are caught with one in their possession but there is no evidence of it being used, or have their certificate taken away if they are caught cheating.
