A university has been forced to apologise for a “racist” email that appeared to accuse Chinese students of cheating.

The student welfare department at Liverpool University wrote to students with advice about their upcoming exams, setting out the rules and regulations as well as the punishments for students caught cheating.

But the university only translated "cheating" into Chinese, despite the email being sent to all international students.

The email, sent from the university’s student services centre, said: "We find that our Chinese students are usually unfamiliar with the word 'cheating' in English and we therefore provide this translation: 舞弊".

Elsewhere, the email explained that “students who are caught cheating in exams suffer serious consequences”, and provided a translation of the word cheating in Chinese characters, but in no other languages.

Students have launched a petition, which tonight had over 1,000 signatures, accusing the university of “irresponsible, arrogant, and discriminative action”.