Kyoto University bans watches in exams

Of all the things to be banned from a school exam room, there was a time when few would have expected watches to be on that list.

Well, Kyoto University in Japan has announced it won’t let students wear watches during entrance exams in case they have the urge to cheat.

With the new advances in smartwatches, the university said students could use their timepieces to communicate with others or to break the rules in other ways.

The ban will be in place for entrance exams in February 2016, to keep things fair.

For those worried about keeping time, they’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way and check the clock on the wall in the exam room.

Kyoto University is the first in Japan to put a complete ban on watches, but it’s certainly not the first in the world, and presumably it won’t be long before it’s commonplace for watches to sit alongside calculators and phones on the forbidden list.