Cheating in GCSE exams - how common?

I took 'O' Levels and I remember a girl in my year who was caught cheating.

She'd submitted a shop-made dress with the labels cut out for her Needlework coursework. She had every one of her 'O' level exams cancelled and the school expelled her.

I remember being quite shocked, although we'd all been well warned what would happen to anyone caught cheating. I suppose I'd always thought cheating meant looking up answers. It seemed draconian to wreck her whole exam over needlework, but then I hated needlework and dropped it at the first opportunity I got :)

Lainie, schools are no longer doing numerous resits because only the first attempt counts now. In DD2's school there are some kids who are not academic and they do seem to be successful on the second or third attempt to scrape a bare pass - as English and maths GCSE are essential for most jobs, I think that is quite reasonable. This also involves extra lessons in the evenings and at weekends, provided by the school, to get them through.

Personally I think there is nothing wrong with modular exams. DD2 is dyslexic and cannot memorise parrot fashion for terminal exams. DD1 on the other hand did fuck all work and came out with mainly A* because she has an exceptional memory. Ironically her lowest grades - still As - were in two modular exams - French and History - her school only allowed one attempt at each component.

By the way DD1's French is better than mine ever was. So perhaps the GCSE is more effective. I can remember a lot of irregular verb endings though in a variety of tenses!

Our German GCSE in the mid 1990s had a memorised component to the oral exam. There were 7 possible topics, and 5 questions within each topic. We spent weeks in class writing our answers, revising them to include more complicated vocab and grammar to get the maximum possible marks, and memorising them.

Shame we still had the listening, reading and writing to do, really.

My french GCSE was rather confused when we were asked to write our essay on " A family row".
Half the class wrote about an argument between brothers and sisters, the other half about a trip to the local boating park!

Year 10 dd came home very indignant from her English descriptive writing controlled assessment because the girl next to her had her phone out and was copying from it. Teacher was at front of the room oblivious because marking scripts. Dd told the girl quite fiercely to put the phone away; other girl blushed and complied, fortunately. Quite clearly anything could have been going on in that room.

I've always found the part of language exams where you were allowed to take in a dictionary strange - particularly as the dictionaries we were "recommended" at school all had example sentences for most of the words. This made my attempt of "write a postcard home in German from your holiday visiting German friends" a lot easier, if a bit odd content-wise.

Then again, it probably balanced nicely with my crap listening exam. I spoke to some friends afterwards about my (wild) guess of "what was the topic of the television show" as ''a man rescuing a princess from werewolves in the castle' and they were rather

Our speaking exam was a 10 minute speech about a topic chosen by us, which could be pre written and checked by our teacher - so all of it could be memorised. 16 years (ouch) later I still remember chunks of it.

I know a kid who cheated (kept on writing after time was up).

In language exams at my school (we did French, German and English- I lived abroad), when we were 14, we sat the scariest exam (I guess as a kind of warning for the actual important tests- but this was way harder). They gave you a piece of news- usually gory and two witness accounts. You then had an hour to come up with a) another witness account from a different perspective, b) a news article on the side of the 'bad person' and c) two German rhyming poems of twenty lines each.

This was repeated in the French test, and in the English test. We were marked as if we were doing it in our native language. For my German test, I was given the story of a kidnapping of two little children (-a fake story) and in French, it was the story of a bomb exploding on a boat. Fun.

*write

In language exams at my school, you had to wrote an essay you already knew the title of, but write the avtual piece under exam conditions - so basically rope learning spellings etc. It was done in the classroom as coursework, and most of the class cheated!

Hmm. I think I could manage 'Pass auf! Argh! Hilfe!' D'you think that would do?

Worse was German A Level where you had to talk through a series of pictures. You had to turn over card A or card B. My pictures on card B were of a bloke throwing a cigarette out of a sports car window into a gas main. The card A people fared no better upon seeing someone mowing a lawn and getting a stone stuck in the blades. Doesn't bear thinking about.

Lainie, our unseen translation was about evenly divided between those who luckily knew that a pompier was a fireman and took it from there, and those who thought it might be an apple tree and produced some very bizarre stabs at the rest of the passage.

Ah, this is where I'm with Michael Gove and think the best thing is to bring back O Level style final all or nothing exams.

Ds is horrified when I tell him that you walked into French O Level and turned over the paper and there was a piece to translate into French, and a piece to translate back. And you had no clue what vocabulary would come up. And I still remember the essay I had to write. "A tiger has escaped from the zoo." My essay consisted of several people shouting, "Au secours!" and "Il est tres mechant!" [avec les accents, naturellement!]

Complaint no. 53 is kids retaking exams. Ds busts a gut to get a top grade in a one-time only effort, but his cousin gets the same grade on her third attempt. I know it's not officially cheating, but either all schools offer the opportunity to do numerous retakes, or none should.

My daughter was talking about having aqa exam board notes which seemed allowed for english literature but also noted a lot had writtem on their hands and were not caught. Apparently the pre exams notes on the aqa eb paper were legal and above board though....

One my son's friends, T, sat French 2 years early and got an A*. He told my son the teacher insisted on helping in the oral by mouthing the replies. T is a bright and honorable boy and doesn't like this at all. He also feels very uncomfortable about the controlled assessment/learning by rote bit. My son is delighted he's doing iGCSEs so he doesn't have to do the controlled assessment as he actually wants to learn the language.

Happened to my German class when I was at school! The teacher mouthed the words to us all while the tape was recording in our individual speaking assessments. I can't lip read for shit, and actually said "What?" So I don't know how that was never picked up.

Anyway, it all got a bit too awkward for me so I didn't look at him throughout the rest of it. I didn't do so well, but quite a few others did and said it was thanks to his 'special' input.

In Spanish this is a controlled assessment. They prepare a topic in general for a couple of weeks, then they get the actual 5 or 6 questions two or three days before (in English !). They can prepare this word for word and then have to go in and write it up in timed conditions. For higher level this is approx 300 words. This seems bonkers to me and they even are allowed a dictionary with them too. There was a thread about this a few weeks ago. Given how much they can prepare in advance, the member of staff should be checking the dictionaries are 'clean' and patrolling. However according to dcs we know these assessments take place often in the spanish lesson slot, so maybe the actual teacher invigilates. Surely all this tests is whether they can use google translate sensibly and whether they can learn 300 words off by heart. Or following what you are saying effectively sneak notes up their sleeves. No wonder the world thinks we are rubbish at languages.

I've not heard of notes being taken in to exams where they aren't permitted but I have heard talk of a compulsory breakfast club on exam days and the revision done during that club being surprisingly close to what is on the exam paper.

Strict at dd1 school, it seems very unfair on your daughter who's completed the assessment they correct way but may score lower than her cheating class mates.

Actual exams surely ought to have more than one invigilator - not just to check up on each other but in case someone needs to leave the room or suchlike.