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NING'ER COUNTY, Yunnan: Despite the fear of possible aftershocks, local education authorities today allowed students to sit the national college entrance exam in their usual classrooms.

Education officials had been facing a dilemma as to where to hold the key examinations for 679 students after the county in Southwest China's Yunnan Province was hit by an earthquake early on Sunday.

But they said the tests would go ahead as planned.

The local seismological bureau said a number of aftershocks had already struck the area, but they were too small to notice. There was little chance of an aftershock affecting the students as they sat the exam, it said.

In an open letter to students' parents, the education bureau said that following an inspection by experts from the seismological bureau, it had decided that the school building was safe and could be used for the examinations.

Zha Yunsheng, the headmaster of Pu'er Middle School, which is the only one in the county, said education authorities had come up with a plan to deal with an emergency if a tremor is felt.

Students will be immediately evacuated according to a detailed evacuation plan, he said.

The plan requires teachers supervising the exam to comfort students during the evacuation, but also ensure they do not talk to each other to prevent cheating.

If the school building has to be evacuated completely, the students will continue their exams in large tents, 80 of which have been erected on the school grounds.

Any time lost due to the evacuation will be added on to the end, Zha said.

"The students are all mentally prepared for this kind of event, because they have grown up in an area that is prone to earthquakes," Zha said.

He said the school had assigned members of staff to keep a close eye on every student.

"We will not miss a single one," he said.

The students had also received psychological counselling to prepare them for the exam, he said.

Ning'er County, which has a population of 190,000, was hit by an earthquake early on Sunday, damaging almost all buildings and flattening many of the wooden ones. Residents have been living in tents since the quake. Water and electricity supplies have yet to be restored in some areas.

(China Daily 06/07/2007 page3)