TAIYUAN - Fourteen people have been punished for an incident in which seven students sitting the national college entrance exams in North China's Shanxi province received their answer papers late, local authorities announced on Friday.

They were found to be responsible for a delay in sending out papers to the students, who were taking the exam, known as the gaokao in Chinese, at the No 2 Middle School in Yaodu district in the city of Linfen on June 7, the district government said.

An investigation showed that the exam paper handler misdirected answer sheets between rooms, causing seven students in the No 217 examination room to get their papers more than 10 minutes after the exam began at 9 am.

The 14, including Liu Yujiang, secretary of the district's education bureau committee of the Communist Party of China, and Zhu Yunlong, president of the Linfen No 2 Middle School, received punishment ranging from warnings to dismissal.

However, this was not the first time the country's nationwide examination has come under fire.

Earlier this month, test proctors asked more than 1,000 junior high students taking the gaokao in Central China's Hunan province to hand in their papers five minutes ahead of schedule.

Mismanagement of the listening section of China's biannual College English Test left more than 2,000 students stuck in exam rooms for four hours after their exams finished on June 16 at a college in East China's Jiangxi province. Both incidents stirred public uproar.

Experts pointed out that the frequency of mistakes in the exams' management reflects management loopholes and ineffective supervision. Long-term training and a greater sense of responsibility of those who monitor the exams has also been demanded by the public.