Tuition teacher helps students cheat at O-level exams
She and three accomplices passed information to students via smuggled phones and Bluetooth devices
A Singaporean tuition teacher has confessed to her role in an elaborate plot to remotely feed answers to O-level examination papers to six Chinese national students here.
The students - aged 17 to 20 - smuggled mobile phones and Bluetooth devices into exam halls in 2016 and had answers whispered to them via the skin-coloured earphones that they wore.
The Singaporean tuition teacher, Tan Jia Yan, would also sit the exam as a private candidate and beam a live feed of the paper she was attempting to her accomplices, using Facetime.
The accomplices, in turn, would work out the answers and supply them to the students.
Yesterday , Tan, 32, admitted before a district court that she - along with three others - had helped the students cheat.
Tan was employed at Zeus Education Centre in Tampines Street 34 and her three alleged accomplices are the centre's principal Poh Yuan Nie, 52, also known as Pony Poh, Poh's niece Fiona Poh Min, 30, who taught at the centre and Chinese national Feng Riwen, 25.
Both Pohs are Singaporean.
The court heard that another Chinese national, Mr Dong Xin, 30, referred the six students to Zeus for the 2016 O-level examinations.
Mr Dong and Zeus signed contracts stating that for every student he referred to the tuition centre, Poh Yuan Nie would receive $8,000 in deposit and $1,000 in admission fees.
The catch was that the money was to be fully refunded if the students did not pass.
'SOPHISTICATED OPERATION'
Deputy Public Prosecutor Vadivalagan Shanmuga said: "These mobile phones were also well concealed under the students' clothing.
"The trio also helped to place a skin-coloured 'in-ear' earphone on all of the students."
The students have been identified as Zhou Zice, Chen Xiang, Xiao Junze, Wang Fangfei, Chen Yi and Zhang Jinlu.
DPP Vadivalagan said that the "sophisticated cheating operations" ran from Oct 19, 2016.
The plot unravelled on Oct 24 when an alert invigilator thought she could hear transmission sounds coming from one of the students, Chen Yi, and reported the matter to her superiors.
The student was allowed to finish the paper but was later escorted to the invigilators' holding room where he was asked to remove his vest.
He came clean after the communication devices were found on his body.
Tan, who pleaded guilty to 27 cheating charges yesterday, will be back in court on May 15. A trial involving her three alleged accomplices will start today.
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