The application of security technology in all aspects of the college entrance examination

    On May 12, 2014, the Ministry of Education officially notified local education departments that it would launch three special operations starting from May, namely, "cracking down on the sale of cheating equipment," "purifying the test-related network environment," and "purifying the environment around test sites." The operations would focus on combating serious violations of regulations and laws such as collusion to cheat inside and outside the examination room using radio equipment, taking exams for others, and organized group cheating, and the Ministry of Education would have "zero tolerance" for cheating in the college entrance examination.

College Entrance Examination Security

    College Entrance Examination at a Glance

    Since my country officially resumed the unified college entrance examination system in October 1977, the number of applicants has increased from 5.7 million in that year to 9.39 million in 2014, which is also the exam with the largest number of applicants in the world. The college entrance examination admission rate has changed dramatically from 4.7% in 1977 to 75% in 2012.

    The phenomenon of "thousands of people crossing a single-plank bridge" in the college entrance examination seems to have disappeared, but the phenomenon of "one exam determines your whole life" is still difficult to change fundamentally. As part of my country's higher education system, the college entrance examination itself does not reduce the fairness and justice required by the examination. On the contrary, as a manifestation of basic ability, higher education itself has become a necessary condition for talent. And a good educational resume often adds a lot of points to a job application.

   The application of security technology in all aspects of the college entrance examination

    Every human system is not perfect since its creation, and will gradually lose its binding force due to its own loopholes and shortcomings. However, the development and application of technology can often strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the system.

    Take video surveillance as an example. Since 2006, when some examination halls in Beijing and Shanghai first used video surveillance equipment, it has produced a good effect in eliminating cheating and ensuring a fair college entrance examination. By the 2014 college entrance examination, video surveillance had become a basic configuration of the college entrance examination halls, and was extended to all aspects of the examination paper storage, transportation, and marking.

    We can see that security equipment has a very large application space in the three major links of the college entrance examination: pre-exam question setting, exam room order, and post-exam paper marking. The neutrality of security technology itself can effectively eliminate the possibility of human fraud, and the combination with remote communication technology can play a great role in the unified management and supervision of each link.

    [Enclosed protection of "question setting and examination marking places"]

    In 2009, a worker at a printing factory in Luzhou, Sichuan, leaked the exam papers, forcing tens of thousands of students to cancel the final exam. Recently, a junior high school English teacher in Taiwan stole the exam papers for his son and got a perfect score. This shows us the importance of keeping the college entrance examination confidential.

    Liu Yanhua, a teacher at Dalian No. 24 Middle School who once participated in setting the college entrance examination questions, revealed that when she was selected to set the questions in 2013, the teachers were taken to an isolated mountain with a cordon around them, an electric grid outside the cordon, and a shield outside the grid... The teachers set the questions under the close surveillance of cameras. To this day, Teacher Liu does not know where she set the questions that year.

    The protection of "question setting places" and "paper marking places" involves the perimeter intrusion prevention alarm system in the security industry. The alarm system mainly includes detection devices (such as infrared transceivers, vibration sensors, proximity sensing lines, etc.) installed on the perimeter (or fence) of the protected area, perimeter alarms, and alarm control hosts installed in the terminal control room, as well as various alarm intermodal devices and transmission lines. In the armed state, once an intruder attempts to cross the perimeter, the system will sound an alarm, and the on-site alarm location can be clearly seen on the host display in the terminal control room. The perimeter prevention system can be used to implement closed protection of the site.

    There are two solutions for perimeter alarm systems. One is active infrared alarm equipment and the other is perimeter induction cable alarm equipment. The power grid that Liu Yanhua, a teacher from Dalian who once participated in the college entrance examination, saw was the second type of perimeter induction cable.

   [Detection and monitoring in "examination room order"]

    The maintenance of exam room order includes three aspects: entrance, exam room and emergency handling. The entrance inspection includes two types of inspections: exam papers and items, and candidates and invigilators. Personnel inspection also includes personnel identification to prevent substitution.

    “Entry detection”

    Examination papers and other items entering the venue: To effectively prevent the leakage of examination papers, this year's college entrance examinations in various places have used high-definition video real-time monitoring and GPS navigation and positioning systems throughout the entire process of examination paper transportation. The storage, distribution, activation, and recycling of examination papers are all monitored and recorded in full video, and the examination paper bags are sealed with plastic bags. In addition, the college entrance examination venues in some provinces and cities prohibit the carrying of metal objects, and use metal detection instruments to identify them. In order to prevent the use of smuggling and various concealed equipment, each examination room is equipped with clocks and stationery.

    Personnel entry: Each college entrance examination site has a dedicated channel for invigilators, who enter the examination room with their test papers and cards through the dedicated channel. The safety of the examination room is ensured by separating the entrance channels and conducting targeted inspections. Candidates must undergo identity verification before entering the examination room. They must use an identity verification terminal to verify the candidate's information through their ID card, admission ticket, photo, fingerprint, and other information.

    In the process of entrance inspection, the most important thing is to use security technologies such as security gates and intelligent recognition to achieve fast and accurate detection. This technology is relatively mature in the application of security inspection systems in public places, and there is no problem with large-scale standardized use in college entrance examination venues.

   "Exam room monitoring"

    Thanks to the high-definition, intelligent and networked video surveillance, the high-definition and networked degree of college entrance examination venues in various places has been continuously improved. The high-definition images of high-definition video surveillance combined with real-time transmission of the network, the unified monitoring of provinces and cities can effectively prevent the occurrence of collusion and fraud between regional invigilators and candidates, and deter criminals.

   【Network Inspection and Information Blocking】

    The emergence of various hidden, miniature, and even implanted cheating devices may cause cheating devices to enter the examination room. Effectively blocking the information exchange of cheaters inside and outside the examination room requires the use of radio interference and shielding technology. The radio monitoring vehicles currently used in the college entrance examination examination room can completely cover the examination room, and even affect the normal signal communication in the residential areas around the examination room.

    Another important application of the college entrance examination network inspection system is to set up an integrated video monitoring platform based on the real-time examination room monitoring system. Through the transmission of the remote network, all provinces, cities, districts and counties can simultaneously inspect the major examination rooms through the video monitoring system.

    Future Application of Intelligent Analysis in College Entrance Examination Security

    In the future, the application of intelligent examination room monitoring will be more effective and faster in identifying cheating behaviors. The core content of intelligent video monitoring is the automatic detection, tracking and behavior recognition of specific targets, including motion detection, target classification, target tracking, and behavior recognition.

    For example, human body tracking: first detect moving objects from real-time image sequences, then determine the human body in the moving objects, then track the human body's movement trajectory, analyze and select people with abnormal behavior, and finally continue to track people with abnormal behavior.

    In the future, the video surveillance of the college entrance examination will be able to change from "passive" to "active", and intelligent analysis will be able to distinguish the possibility of cheating in the behavior of candidates. When candidates leave their seats, talk to each other, etc., the video system will actively remind the video inspector to pay attention.

   summary

    The use of security technology in the examination is to ensure the fairness of the examination, prevent Gresham's law of "bad money driving out good money", achieve the purpose of selecting the best talents in the examination, and protect the rights and interests of candidates. Therefore, we should pay attention to the development of college entrance examination security technology and effectively play the due functions of security equipment and technology in order to cope with the challenge of "high-tech" fraud to the fairness of the college entrance examination.