Private tutors have been banned from acting as scribes for pupils in their exams, amid claims they are used to cheat.

The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), an umbrella body which oversees the exam boards, has updated its regulations to specify that private tutors should not be enlisted as scribes for GCSE and A-level exams.

It follows allegations that wealthy families have been “gaming the system” by putting their child’s tutor forward as their nominated scribe.

If a student has learning disabilities and cannot write well enough to complete their exam papers, they can apply to JCQ to have a scribe who is supposed to write out answers to exam questions as dictated to by the pupil.

But it has been claimed that children were cheating by having their tutors fill out the question for them, with the pupil merely reading aloud the answers that their "scribe" has already written out.

Lucy Powell, a Labour MP who sits on the Commons Education Select Committee, previously called for a review of the regulations “around using private tutors as scribes to ensure already advantaged pupils do not game the system”.

Relatives, friends and peers are also barred from being scribes, according to the rules, but “private tutor” has now been added to the list to “provide greater clarity” on the issue, a spokesman for JCQ said.