Ofqual data for 2017 exams in England shows 25% rise in number of penalties issued to students for trying to cheat

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The number of pupils penalised for cheating during GCSE and A-level exams rose sharply last year, mostly as a result of mobile phones being smuggled into exam halls.

Official figures also show the number of teachers and school staff involved in exam malpractice more than doubled between 2016 and 2017.

Ofqual, the exam regulator for England, said the most common category of malpractice was the introduction of “unauthorised materials” into exam venues.

“In most cases, this was a mobile phone or other electronic communications device,” it said.

Perfectionism is destroying the mental health of my millennial generation | Daisy Buchanan Read more

Unauthorised materials accounted for half of all students given penalties for cheating, and of those nearly 80% related to the use of mobile phones. Plagiarism was the other main category, accounting for 17% of cases.

But Ofqual said the overall number of cheating cases remained low despite the 25% rise. The 2,715 penalties issued to 2,585 students represent just 0.015% out of more than 18m exam entries. In 2016, a total of 2,180 students were caught, a rate of 0.011%.

In most cases students were punished with a reduction in marks or were given a warning, but 490 had their grades disqualified. Students found with mobile phones were more likely to lose marks.

The increase in teachers and other school and college staff involved is more concerning. The number rose from 360 in 2016 to 895 in 2017 after a change in response by the examination boards which offer A-levels and GCSEs.

The regulator said the increase was likely to be the result of the exam boards such as AQA taking a tougher stance on individual wrongdoing.

“Exam boards are more likely to issue formal written warnings for similar offences rather than informal advisory notes this year. This still involves a very small proportion of the total number of staff in England,” Ofqual said.

In more than half of cases the teachers received written warnings, but 185 were required to undergo training, while 90 were barred from involvement in exams. Nearly a third of cases involved teachers giving “improper assistance” to exam candidates.

Despite the rise in student and staff malpractice, the number of schools and colleges given punishments fell sharply, from 155 in 2016 to 120 last year.

The 2017 data included for the first time details of cheating in individual subjects, and showed maths and computing accounted for about a third of all penalties.

Pupils taking computing exams accounted for the majority of plagiarism cases, which reinforces concerns last year that assessment tasks for GCSE computing had been leaked and circulated online.

In November Ofqual said computing coursework would not be used as part of students’ final GCSE grades until reforms had been made.

In Wales, the rise in the number of pupils caught with mobile phones was smaller, up from 70 to 80.

Just 180 pupils in Wales received penalties, fewer than the 195 in 2015. But the proportion penalised, 0.015% was similar to that in England.

The figures do not include the scandal involving Eton over the Pre-U exams revealed by the Guardian last year. This is because the A-level equivalent offered by Cambridge Assessment International Examinations is not part of the body that collects the national data.















