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Test message should be free

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-12 07:48

No fees should be collected for checking the voice message via telephone about the scores of the national college entrance examination, says an article in Beijing News. The following is an excerpt:

A recent report said that Shanghai will cancel such a charge from this year. For this, the educational bureau will invest 400,000 yuan to cover the free services for students.

From this report we learnt that the charge for these services is very common across the country. Beijing cancelled this charge in 2005. That is to say the money charged for the voice messages about this exam in the whole country must be big if it reaches 400,000 yuan for a province or municipality, as Shanghai has claimed.

People have long raised their doubts about the charge for score-checking. For the scores of test-takers constitute personal information. Theoretically speaking, the score-checking should not involve any fee at all.

The educational bureaus have given the test scores in past years to voice message operators as a scarce commodity. Test-takers, however, have to pay much higher fees than normal telephone calls to get their scores, which has aroused loud complaints and criticism.

It is certain that educational bureaus have no right to sell the information of test takers and make profits from that.

Beijing and Shanghai canceled the charge. We hope that more places will follow suit.

(China Daily 06/12/2008 page8)