Nineteen French high school students arrested for leaking math exam questions.

On July 2-3, French police arrested 19 high school students in Marseille and Paris to investigate a case in which thousands of students shared leaked math exam questions via text messages and the WhatsApp application.

The Paris prosecutor's office said seven students have been released, while 12 remain detained and face potential charges of exam fraud. However, the French education authorities decided not to cancel the exam because about half of the 740,000 high school students had already completed it.

Alongside the exam leak, French Education Minister Jean Michel Blanquer is now facing another crisis as teachers involved in grading exams in some regions are threatening not to release the scores in protest against the proposed reforms to the baccalaureate exam starting in 2021. This affects 108,000 out of 4 million exam papers.

Teachers are trying to persuade the government to reopen negotiations on reforming final exams from 2021, calling for more continuous assessment and less reliance on exams. Thousands of French people have also taken to the streets in recent months to protest the exam system.

Minister Blanquer said he had spoken with the teachers, asserting that "this is completely contrary to community service principles and will result in severe financial penalties." Some sources suggest that Blanquer threatened to cut two weeks' pay from these teachers.

This isn't the first time France has leaked exam questions. Something similar happened in 2011 on an internet forum.

The French baccalaureate exam is notoriously difficult, based on the exam structure from the Napoleonic era in 1808, and includes subjects such as science, economics, social sciences, literature, and philosophy. To be admitted to university, French students take the exam (held in June) and receive a baccalaureate (high school diploma).