dd given a past paper to do at home under exam conditions - what would you do?

Are you worried that other parents helping their children will disadvantage your DD? If so bring it up with the teacher.

I would support my child by providing a quiet and comfortable area to complete the past paper.

Teaching a child to cheat and teaching a child that its okay to benefit from cheating isn’t support, its selfish and irresponsible.

I’m language teacher so let me tell you what will happen if your daughter is my student.

I’ll mark all of the papers.

I’ll check to see what common errors there are. The main purpose is to find out if everything has been both taught correctly and understood correctly. It also highlights students who may have been cheating by ‘helping’ each other but mostly, I will modify my teaching to focus more on a grammar point/vocabulary/whatever.

Then I’ll check to see if anyone did particularly well or badly based on their past performance. If Jane’s mum has just had another baby, their will be distractions in that home that could affect her grade, or Tommy’s parents are getting divorced. I’ll ask students about their grades and what went wrong. Because I teach languages, I have done this in the target language and had such a brilliant response from a student, I booted her up to the next level to match her speaking and made her promise to work her ass off to get her written work up to scratch. She didn’t disappoint. I have also allowed resits for those with reasons but less ability to demonstrate their skills on the spot.

Those who have performed significantly better than anticipated also get looked more closely. I’ll double check their answers can replicated using similar questions/grammar/vocabulary. Then I’m usually pretty blunt and ask them why that can do x on a test but not with me. The silence speaks volumes but is then usually followed by a rush of crappy excuses.

I have been known to say ‘I am paid to mark your work, not your friend’s/sister’s/father’s/brother’s’.

If I believe cheating has occurred, you get a zero, not a second chance.

I will ensure my HoD knows the reason for the zero. I will speak to the parents and no amount of pressure will make me change that grade.

There will be a lecture regarding the importance academic integrity, how plagiarism is theft, how children learn by example, and how languages are taught and learned in such a way that they require building blocks and foundations. If I don’t know you are missing a building block, I will not teach that building block and therefore you will not effectively learn the next block.

Students that cheat lose my respect. Their work will always be subject to additional scrutiny in my classroom.

If I am your daughter’s teacher, there is at least a 90% chance that you and I will be having a chat a few days after the test. Do you really want me to judge your parenting and lecture you? You are welcome to lie or hang up the phone but that isn’t going to help your daughter’s education.

Let me know what she doesn’t know so that I can actually help her achieve her potential.

Don’t teach her to be a cheat or take short cuts. Teach her to be honest and to learn.

You aren’t talking about supporting her to do the best she can, you’re talking about cheating.

Supporting her to do the best she can is helping her revise and prepare for the exam and then making sure she has a calm and quiet space in which to sit it. Nothing more.

I wouldn't cheat, if that's what you mean. Of course it's a tempting thought but it sets a very bad example and it isn't fair on everyone else. If my DC don't have the ability to pass an exam on their own, I wouldn't be helping them by letting them cheat.

Think about it another way, mock papers are typically used for teachers to assess strengths and weaknesses so they can intervene.

Would you be happy to help your child, give the teacher an inflated picture of your DC's ability and the outcome be that as DC is on track for a 4/5 they don't require any intervention? Then at the 11th hour schools get told how grades are awarded and it could be anything, but your child hasn't had the help they need because you cheating on their mocks prevented them getting the help they need to get the grade they were capable of.

Nope - a really crap example to set for your child.

Surely you mean should I help her cheat? Let's not be disingenuous in your intentions

Even if you take all morals out of it, it's a really bad idea. The teacher will spot it a mile off and if they suspect cheating then they will have no choice but to base their assessment on the work done in school. As you already know she didn't do well then, all you would be doing is jeopardising her opportunity to improve her grade with the foundation paper. Encourage her to prepare for it, and make sure she can do the best SHE can.

Also, it's GCSE French, does it really matter enough to set such a terrible example. I could understand if it was maths/English, so likely to hold her back, but what difference will it really make if she bums at French. I'm assuming that she won't be studying languages at college (don't seem to be her strong point), so let her experience a minor failure if needs be. Once she has the next level of qualifications, no one will care what grade she got in an unrelated subject at GCSE.

In the kindest way possible, GCSEs are piss easy yet your daughter is already struggling?

Go ahead, let her cheat her way to a-levels and university if you must, but don’t act shocked when she drops out or fails because she can’t cope with the content as it’s too advanced for her.

The whole point of the practice paper it to give the kids an idea of what the real thing will be like, and to also highlight weak areas so they can be worked on.

Helping her complete the exam will serve no purpose whatsoever other than making her either look more capable than she is, or make you look like a cheat.

You’re teaching her that it’s better to cheat than get a low mark. How is that going to help her in life? How is she going to feel if she does get low marks in future? Will she know to study harder or will she just give up or take shortcuts. Look beyond this year and think what you want to teach your daughter.

Don't be thick OP. Of course it's wrong to help your dd cheat. And please be honest - by "help" you mean "cheat".

She'll remember that you taught her to cheat. She'll know you didn't believe in her and that ultimately you were dishonest and a liar.

Your attitude make me sick. Just do.the bloody paper yourself FFS if it bothers you so much.

I would help her in advance by going through what she needs to do, making sure she has revised some key areas (verbs and vocab) and then on the day I would make sure she had a quiet space and equipment as needed.

What is the point of doing it for her or telling her what the words mean or giving her a dictionary (or whatever else you mean by "help")? Honestly I despair.

We actually rang 2 parents this week to say "you did really well in that test, but next time could you let your son do it please?"

Brilliant!

It’ll be really obvious if she suddenly gets a much higher grade surely!

Take home practice papers have been around for ever, the teacher assumed you realised this! And no to ‘if you saw mistakes...’ how would you see mistakes unless you were looking at it? My parents wouldn’t look at it if I were doing a test paper in exam conditions because I wanted to much less if it were because the teacher had set them. That is normal parenting to me. You can help her revise, prepare. IF chest sheets are allowed you can help her prepare those, she should know whether they are or not. And when she hits start you disappear from the room for the duration of the test. You don’t bring drinks, snacks, advice, headache tablets, you don’t step foot in the room.

Sad as fuck, your daughter needs to learn that what she learns is on her, you are extremely pathetic if you help.

Our school has a policy currently going though the system for when we suspect parents are helping at home with work to be completed under exam conditions.

Sad this is needed . . .

My dc is doing their gcse this year too.
The teachers know very well that the students will access to things they don’t normally have access to. There is little they can do about it.
Even with a video in, they can open another tab, have notes next to them etc... and the teacher won’t be able to see anything.

They KNOW. And tbf asking the parents to check ‘it’s like exam conditions’ is crap. Because many pupils won’t parents next to them. I certainly won’t be behind my dc when they are doing a mini exam like this.

As for helping.... I think Google translate is her best friend there.