A total of 15 officials in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality have been punished for falsifying the ethnicity of 31 students to get extra points in the national college entrance exam, local authorities said Tuesday.

These officials, including deputy magistrate of Shizhu County Tang Ping, public security officials and ethnicity officials, were given warnings inside the Communist Party of China (CPC) or removed from their administrative posts, according to a statement from the CPC's Chongqing Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection.

They changed the ethnic status of 31 students from Han to minorities so that the students could enjoy preferential treatment, including being awarded extra score in the entrance exam.

Some of the officials are parents of the students.

All the 31 students have been disqualified to be admitted by any university this year, according to the office in charge of college admission in Chongqing.

The office did not reveal the identities of the students, saying the publication would harm the growth of the young students.

The Ministry of Education on Tuesday praised the local authorities' punishment of the officials and the protection of the students.

The local government was resolute in fighting corruption in the entrance examination and conducted serious investigation in the cases, the ministry said in a statement.

The scandal was exposed to the public after He Chuanyang, who scored the highest in Chongqing in the entrance exam in June, was found to have lied about his ethnicity.

He was denied admission by Peking University which he applied for.

He's father, He Yeda, was removed from his post as head of Wushan County's college entrance examination office. He's mother Lu Lingqiong was removed from the county's organization department.

China's national college admission test, or "gao kao", has been a fierce competition since it was resumed in 1977 after the 10-year Cultural Revolution.

Though it's easier nowadays to enter college -- with 10.2 million candidates competing for 6.29 million seats this year, compared with 5.7 million for 270,000 places in 1977, competition remains white-hot as most students eye top universities.

As a result, a string of scandals about cheating, leaked exam papers or even buying into universities have been reported in recent years.

The Ministry of Education said 2,219 students were found cheating during this year's exam alone.

(Xinhua News Agency July 8, 2009)