Mother caught trying to take daughter’s Uni exam

A 67-year-old woman was charged with criminal impersonation after she was caught trying to take the state university entrance exams with her 25-year-old daughter’s ID card.

Police confirmed they had charged the suspect, who was later released, after receiving a complaint earlier in the week about a woman who turned up at a Larnaca high school to take the entry exam in her daughter’s place.

The woman was charged in writing and will appear in court at a later stage.

The woman turned up at the school even though school officials had no record of the woman’s daughter applying to take the exam.

Police said the daughter had expressed no interest in taking the exam, so it appears the woman took it upon herself to get her child into a university.

Students wanting to attend a state university in Cyprus or Greece must take the entry exam, organised at the end of the school year.

Although police said it is the first such case they had come across, it comes only days after the government’s volunteerism commissioner resigned over allegedly falsifying his academic qualifications.

Commissioner Yiannis Yiannaki manipulated his high school diploma grades to make them look better and included a fake college degree on his CV.

The qualifications got him appointed to the Cyprus Youth Board (ONEK) in 1996, securing a permanent position in 2007.

President Nicos Anastasiades appointed him commissioner for volunteerism and non-governmental organisations in May 2013; he resigned last week.