Oct 03, 2020 (Japan Today) - Kaisei High School, located in Tokyo’s Nishi Nippori neighborhood, is a very respected academic institute. Its major claim to fame is that for 39 years and counting it has sent more students to the University of Tokyo, Japan’s most prestigious university, than any other high school in the country.
As such, Kaisei’s entrance exam is no joke, and sure enough, a recent investigation discovered that the entrance exam for one student at the school had actually been taken by someone else. OK, so some underqualified kid hired a ringer to take the test for him right? Nope, so put on your thinking cap as we go through the bizarre chain of events.
Kaisei held its entrance exam back on Feb 10, and one applicant, who we’ll call A-kun, showed up to take the test. A few days later Kaisei informed him that he’d passed, and on Feb 16 he attended an orientation session where he completed the paperwork to officially enroll in the school. On both days he had to show a photo ID to confirm his identity.
In an ordinary school year, an entrance ceremony would have been held in April to welcome new students to the school, and regular classes would have begun. However, with coronavirus infection numbers spiking from late February, the entrance ceremony (which student’s parents often attend) was cancelled, and classes for A-kun and his classmates began online. Kaisei resumed on-campus classes in late June, and the school year’s first semester wrapped up in late July.
Around this time, Kaisei’s administrators noticed something unusual: they still hadn’t received a copy of A-kun’s academic record from the junior high school he’d attended. Initially, they’d chalked this up do to a paperwork delay caused by the coronavirus situation, since the pandemic has been especially disruptive for schools. Still, half a year seems like plenty of time for someone to email a PDF or drop a hard copy in the mail, so Kaisei contacted A-kun’s junior high school…only to be told that they had indeed sent his records, but to a different high school where A-kun was attending classes.
In other words, A-kun didn’t have someone else take his entrance exam for him, but instead took the entrance exam, passed, and then had another boy, who we’ll call B-kun, attend his classes, both online and in-person, for an entire semester.
