Egypt s education ministry said on Tuesday that the electronic bar code printed on each Thanaweya Amma exam booklet has helped identify the individual who leaked the English language exam on Tuesday, Al-Ahram Arabic website reported.
The student used a smart phone to post the exam on social media one half-hour after the test began.
An unnamed source at the education ministry told Al-Ahram Arabic news website that the student is from Egypt s delta governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh.
The source also said that the student was apprehended with the smart phone inside the examination room.
In recent years, Thanaweya Amma exams have been repeatedly leaked and shared via Facebook and WhatsApp.
The ministry has been working to stop this phenomenon by introducing digital bar codes on exam papers and by increasing penalties, which can include fines of EGP 100,000-200,000 and jail terms between two and seven years.
In 2017, Egypt also introduced a new national high school exam system named Booklet to reduce the likelihood of errors in the correction process and to eliminate the risk of leaks.
The new system requires students to submit their answers on the question sheet itself, in contrast to the previous system in which answers were written on a separate sheet.
More than 650,000 students are taking this year s tests.
