Singapore tutor held for using skin coloured earphones to help students cheat

Private tuition is big business in Singapore with parents paying as much as S$700 ($535) for four-session courses and some tutors have become millionaires from the business.

A Singaporean tutor has pleaded guilty to helping six Chinese students cheat in school exams in a “highly sophisticated” operation using video calling and skin-coloured earphones, court documents seen by Reuters on Wednesday showed.

Tan Jia Yan, 32, worked for a tuition centre that offered money-back guarantees to Chinese students if they failed to pass exams and get a place in a Singapore polytechnic. (Representative Photo)

Private tuition is big business in Singapore with parents paying as much as S$700 ($535) for four-session courses and some tutors have become millionaires from the business.

Singapore’s reputation for a good education system attracts students from across Asia and beyond.

Tan Jia Yan, 32, worked for a tuition centre that offered money-back guarantees to Chinese students if they failed to pass exams and get a place in a Singapore polytechnic.

Tan pleaded guilty on Monday to 27 charges of cheating.

Together with her colleagues, Tan helped attach “wearable Bluetooth devices” and skin-coloured earphones to the students which were connected to discreetly placed mobile phones when they sat their exams in 2016.

Tan then sat the exams herself as a private candidate and used a camera phone attached to her chest to send video footage of the paper to her colleagues via Facebook’s Facetime app .

Court documents said the “highly sophisticated” operation ran between Oct. 19 and Oct. 24, 2016, before it was uncovered by an invigilator.

Tan faces up to 3 years in prison or a fine, or both, per charge.

Three of her colleagues, including principal of the Zeus Education Centre, had also been charged, but were contesting the charges, media reported.

The principal allegedly worked with a Chinese associate, who would refer students to him, court documents said.

For each student referred, the associate allegedly received S$8,000 ($6,100) in deposit fees and another S$1,000 ($763) in admission fees.

The court documents said the six students were witnesses in the case.

(The story has not been modified from its original version, only the headline has been changed)