Sharp rise in exam cheats in North
More than 60 students have been caught cheating and flouting rules during exams in the North, it was revealed today.
There was a sharp increase in disruptive behaviour as well as the use of mobile phones and copying work to boost marks, according to the body responsible for setting and marking tests.
Teaching officials said the integrity of exams and coursework could be endangered unless action is taken.
Results for A and AS Level exams are due next week.
Willie Carvill from the NASUWT teaching union said: “This does undermine the credibility of exams and it demonstrates that people are concerned by this problem.
“There must be credibility or else people won’t have any faith in them.”
The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) said there were 62 infringements this year, compared with 53 last year.
Mr Carvill said advancing technology made it easier to cheat.
He added: “The whole basis of coursework is something people are seriously questioning. All you have to do now is Google a subject to find the answer and you can even do this during exams using mobile phones.
“It does sow seeds of doubt in people’s minds.”
The CCEA is particularly worried about disruptive behaviour during exams, which happened 12 times this year during GCSE sessions. Most cases of disruptive behaviour involve talking and verbal abuse.
The director of operations, Neil Anderson, said: “This year we have seen an increased number of cases involving serious disruptive behaviour during examinations, the type of behaviour capable of causing significant distress to other candidates and to the staff responsible for supervising examinations.
“We intend to come down hard on the individuals responsible for this type of behaviour by handing down the toughest penalties available to us under national guidelines for handling cases of examinations malpractice.”
There were more than 237,000 examination entries this year and exam chiefs said the proportion of those doing wrong was low.
Penalties include disqualification from courses, losses of marks and bans from sitting exams for two years.
The number of people taking mobile phones into exams and copying coursework soared in recent years, although the increase stabilised this year.
Former Fermanagh St Paul’s Primary School principal and local councillor John O’Kane said: “We have seen a trend of increasingly disruptive behaviour in the classroom so it seems this is spreading to exams.
“We are seeing people being supervised by more elderly people who are not their teachers and maybe they should be questioning that kind of strategy.”
