JERUSALEM — The boy, a 10th-grader in Rehovot, isn’t at all embarrassed to admit he cheats on tests.
“Out of 10 tests, I’ll cheat on every one,” he says.
The boy asserts that he isn’t unusual, at least not at Amal High School No. 1 in Rehovot.
“There are about 30 kids in a class. And I’d say, on any given test, there will be maybe five kids who don’t cheat. The level of the school isn’t very high, and the kids who don’t cheat are the best students in the class, so they don’t have to.”
Pupils have even invented a Hebrew word for the little scraps of paper they make notes on and smuggle into class on exam day: shlifim, literally “things that can be pulled out quickly.”
“Kids put the shlifim behind their watch bands, in their socks, they write notes on the desk, on their arm, on the soles of their shoes — anywhere,” the boy said.
Cheating on school tests doesn’t generally make headlines, unless it’s an exceptional case — as was the incident in June 1997 when hundreds of high school students were caught buying the answers to that year’s Bible matriculation exam from a pupil whose father had obtained them through his job at the Government Printing Office.
But educators say the problem is growing, as students develop more sophisticated techniques to beat the system.
In the last round of matriculation exams, some 5,700 out of 950,000 tests — one out of every 167 — were dubbed “suspicious” by the Education Ministry’s Examinations Department.
This marks a slight percentage increase over the previous year. After the suspect exams are checked again and the students’ appeals are heard, a few hundred will probably be marked kosher and the rest of the 5,700 invalidated, said department head Moshe Decalo.
Of the roughly 750 high schools that give the matriculation exams each year, Decalo said, “about 20 are problematic,” meaning their cheating problem is glaring.
In the 1992-93 school year, the Examinations Department publicized its findings about cheating. The most controversial finding, Decalo recalled, was that Arab schools were worse than Jewish ones. Asked why this was so, he speculates: “Maybe it’s because Israeli Arabs are a minority and they feel like they’re cheating somebody else’s system, not their own.”
The publication caused an uproar among Israeli Arab politicians, who claimed the Arab community was being persecuted. Since then, the department no longer gives a demographic breakdown of cheating.
Decalo asserts that cheating in Israeli schools is getting worse, in terms of the methods used.
If the old-fashioned ways are still the most common — whispering, peeking and shlifim — there is now more and more creativity, daring and high-tech razzle-dazzle being brought to the craft.
“We have pupils who come to the exam with vibrating beepers in their pockets,” Decalo said.
“They’ve arranged with somebody to be in the bathroom at a certain time. And after they get the test they write down the questions they don’t know on a piece of paper, and then they tell the proctor they have to pee. They leave the paper in the bathroom; [then] the ‘partner’ picks it up, finds out the answers and sends them to the student over his vibrating beeper.”
The brazenness of Israeli students — not only the way they cheat, but their expectation that nothing will or even should happen to them if they’re caught — amazes Decalo. He notes that on the day of this interview, a proctor filed a personal-injury claim because he was hit by a student he’d caught cheating.
Why is cheating such a problem in Israel and why is it getting worse? Decalo can only speculate: Maybe it’s the increased competition and the importance of college and university as a prerequisite for success.
But nobody really knows, says Decalo, because no research has been done in Israeli universities on cheating.
Is there anything characteristically Israeli about cheating in school? Decalo asserts that if anything, it is “the carelessness which it’s dealt with.”
Not only is there little in the way of educating children not to cheat, but penalties are lax. Decalo notes that every year 10 to 20 students are found to have cheated on the matriculation exam in an aggravated, elaborate way like bringing in reams of notes from which to copy.
As a result, those students are barred from retaking the test for one to three years. The rest caught cheating merely have their exam disqualified and can take it again as soon as they like.
But the worst aspect of cheating in Israeli schools is that some principals and teachers help the students cheat on the matriculation exam. Results are the overriding measure of success not only for pupils but also for teachers and principals, whose careers can depend on producing high success rates.
At times it’s even obvious the principal is helping the students cheat and is trying to cover up, Decalo notes. When Examination Department inspectors make their unannounced spot checks at schools giving the matriculation exam, he said, “sometimes we find that the principal is expecting us. Sometimes he’s coordinated with the school guard to call him if he sees somebody ‘suspicious’ coming.”
Serving in his current post for nearly five years in an Israeli education career that began in 1973, Decalo said he knows of no principal who has lost his job for helping students cheat. All that happens is that “their reputations are damaged.”
A few years ago, a retired principal proctoring a biology matriculation exam in a Rishon Lezion class taught by his daughter was found giving answers to pupils. Criminal charges were pressed against the ex-principal and his daughter. About to begin work at another school as a principal, she lost both her old job and her new one.
“Other than that case I don’t know of any teacher who has been fired for helping students cheat,” Decalo said.