![[Photos] To Curb Cheating, Saigon High School Makes Students Test Outside](https://media.urbanistnetwork.com/saigoneer/article-images/legacy/R9WKnMnb.jpg)
Cheating is a well-known scourge of the Vietnamese education system, with students employing everything from smart watches to impersonators in an effort to improve their performance. As many schools struggle to address this problem, Saigon’s An Duong Vuong High School may have found a bright solution: make students take exams outside, meters away from one another.
In the Thu Duc high school, students sit at individual desks 1.2–1.5 meters apart in the schoolyard and are monitored by the watchful eyes of six to seven examiners.
School headmaster Tran Duc Thanh told Bao Moi that his school had been using the technique since 2012 due to classroom overcrowding. However, even after the school expanded, Thanh decided to continue with the outdoor test-taking.
"At first we were forced to hold an exam outdoors in the schoolyard because our school was too small, and we didn't have enough room for hundreds of students to take exams at the same time," Thanh told Bao Moi.
He added: "When proposing this idea, we had asked for student opinions and most of them were in favor. We then found that this could prevent cheating so we continued."
Thanh admitted that weather poses the biggest problem to such an undertaking. "We have to follow the weather forecast carefully before holding an exam. But if it rains suddenly, the students will be moved to a large dining room to continue their exam."
These images of an exam held last week at the school quickly spread across Facebook where they were posted by the headmaster.
[Photos via Bao Moi]
