DD accused of cheating at school

[Grizzzly]

DD (11) is working on a school project with another girl in her class. The kids have been paired up by the teacher and the kids got no say on who they had to work with.

DD is quite academic and enjoys her school work and is very much enjoying this project. The other girl however is not on the same page, she isn’t interested in it and when the girls meet up after school to work on it the other girl just wants to watch YouTube videos or play games.

The bits the other girl has managed to do are (in DDs worse) “scruffy and incorrect”. DD has got frustrated and has redone the other girls work but still credited it to the other girl.

the teacher picked up on this and said she could tell DD had written what was meant to be written by the other girl. She questioned the girls, showed them the “suspicious work” and the other girl said “I didn’t do that”. DD then had to admit that she’d done it. She got into a lot of trouble and then told the teacher “well I don’t want to be held back by her, I want to win”. This got her into more trouble.

AIBU to side with DD on this? The best project wins a prize and will have their work displayed.

You may also be sacked for changing someone else's work and not telling them, and then presenting that work, attributing it to the other person. That dishonesty was the issue, not the actual work of either of them.

I hated projects like this at school (and it was worse at university, when it actually meant something!)
I don't think your daughter has committed a major sin, for what it's worth. And she's 11, so it doesn't REALLY mean anything, or make a difference to any official grade/qualification. I suspect the project was more intended as a "motivation" type thing, than a "produce an incredible thing" project. She'll just learn to be a bit sneakier about it next time!

For my dissertation at uni, I was in a group of 6, completing a project. I remember completing ALL the data analysis for our findings, which I shared with the ONE person who I felt had actually pulled their weight during the project. I never found out what the other 4 members of the group did, and didn't care. I guess they had to analyze the data themselves as well! It took ME hours, and I was quite good at it, so I dread to think how they got on!

But like my dad used to say, "if you want a job doing properly, you're best off doing it yourself." And in academia particularly, that's true, like 95% of the time.

well you'd tell the other person - hey Bob, do you mind if i put your work into the same format as mine (ie its in one powerpoint file with same background/font) and i spotted this looks wrong, do you mind if i correct it to this?

i am not actually sure how the OPs team work was supposed to work? How would you show it if its 2 different handwritten items? surely the team work is making it into one cohesive document?

Unless the other girl knew her work had been edited to improve it and then lied and denied it in-front of the teacher to throw the OPs DD under the bus. We don’t know who was dishonest here.

But like my dad used to say, "if you want a job doing properly, you're best off doing it yourself."

which would make you really shit at delegating to a team.

@lollipoprainbow and maybe OP's DD has SEN. We don't know in either case. But it is true that some kids can't be arsed.

I think its important to remember we don't know of the other girls work was no good. Lots of children have over inflated egos at believing they are the brightest in the class. 11 year olds often think they know best. My daughter is a bright girl but due to being one of youngest and having areas of diffulculties due to dyslexia often other children don't even bother to listen. I know there has been several time that daughter has been correct and she had been told by partner she was wrong. How would dd have felt if someone deleted her work. There is also going to be point where she meets someone smarter than her and she needs to learn to listen and respect others. I knew a few people at school who were convinced they were smarter than everyone else, many then fell apart when there were people who were better than them as whole self worth was built around been brightest and best at everything.

I think its important to remember we don't know of the other girls work was no good.
But we do know it was no good the OP has stated in one of her posts that the DD saved the one paragraph that was “scruffily” written, with spelling mistakes and misinformation that the other girl had written and given to her as her contribution. The requirement was to do a full page of good information written neatly.

In the absence of guidance from the teacher, (despite requesting guidance in private and being called a liar) the DD did what any good project team lead would do. They corrected the mistakes, tidied it up and still gave the other girl credit. Her only mistake is she re-drafted the work herself as it was all handwritten. If she’d hovered over the other girl and dictated to her, there’d be no stupid accusations of “cheating”. And perhaps if the other girl does have SEN, and struggles with writing the DD thought she was doing a nice thing for a teammate. The teacher gave her no guidance, and is now punishing the DD for trying to make the best of a challenging situation.

You may also be sacked for changing someone else's work and not telling them, and then presenting that work, attributing it to the other person.

I'd be interested to know how people who say this sort of thing think publishing works? I guarantee you that every single piece of news you read – in papers, magazines, online, wherever – will have been edited and altered by at least 1 and almost certainly 2 or 3 different people along the way. But the name of the writer on the article/of the book will be that of the person who wrote the original, no matter how many revisions it has gone through in the meantime.

Obviously OP is about 11-year-old girls so the parameters are somewhat different, but the notion that there is something inherently wrong with changing someone else's work in an attempt to improve it would be met by bafflement by anyone who writes, edits or otherwise works in publishing.

This may say more about me than anything else but at aged 11 (or pretty much any point at compulsory school age) it would not have occured to me to care or feel responsible for a classmates learning. We don't even know if these girls got on, it's too much to expect from them and they should at least have done this group work under supervision.

Ops dd said it was full of incorrect information so it was her opinion rather than giving teacher chance to see that, some children struggle with neatness, that does not make her contribution rubbish all she failed to realise that teacher would be able to tell whose work is whose by how writen. She did not give the other girl fair chance. At end of day they are 11. Hopefully she learnt her lesson and they can move on. They all make mistakes.

You may also be sacked for changing someone else's work and not telling them, and then presenting that work, attributing it to the other person

In a work situation, you'd get the other person's contribution, collate it with yours, make any corrections, put it all into a cohesive style, then send it back to the other person to get their sign-off before presenting it or sending it to the person who wanted it. The other person would thus have the chance to challenge any amendments you'd made.

Ops dd said it was full of incorrect information so it was her opinion rather than giving teacher chance to see that, some children struggle with neatness, that does not make her contribution rubbish all she failed to realise that teacher would be able to tell whose work is whose by how writen. She did not give the other girl fair chance. At end of day they are 11. Hopefully she learnt her lesson and they can move on. They all make mistakes.

The DD asked the teacher for guidance on this in private and the teacher called her a liar. I think that seeking of guidance was the DD giving the girl a fair chance to the best of her ability and to the level we’d expect of an 11yr old child. She was then badly let down by the teacher.

I thought the teacher called her a telltale, which though not pleasant, is not the same as being called a liar. It also depends of course on how she spoke to the teacher and the way it was phrased. The teacher should however have made it clearer to all pupils that the purpose of the task was co operation and collaboration.

If the dd had re written the partners effort and presented the work as her own that would have been odd but in a way understandable as she believed the end product was the expected outcome. I think it is the attempt to disguise her work as the partners by copying handwriting, adding in spelling mistakes that is the real issue, she was deliberately trying to deceive, and however anxious she was ,she knew that this deception was wrong, otherwise why the cover up.

"Unless the other girl knew her work had been edited to improve it and then lied and denied it in-front of the teacher to throw the OPs DD under the bus."

Wouldn't op's dd have told her mum if she did it with the other girls knowledge?

"maybe OP's DD has SEN. We don't know in either case."

Wouldn't op have told us that, it'd be important info.

"In the absence of guidance from the teacher,"

According to op's dd, known to be dishonest.

Learning how to work with people who have different work / learning styles and personalities is a key skill for kids to develop. Good education is about skills not just passing exams.

"In the absence of guidance from the teacher,"

According to op's dd, known to be dishonest.

I'm not sure you can say that definitively. Trying to pass off what she'd re-written as the other girl's work was deceitful. But she did that after she'd gone to the teacher.

She could have been perfectly honest up to that point. When she didn't get the help and guidance she needed from the teacher, that's when she came up with a clumsy/extreme plan. Or she's habitually dishonest, but given that she felt backed into a corner it really could be either.

sorry wrong thread.

@justfiveminutes By the same token maybe the OP would have told us if the other girl had SEN because that would also be relevant info! But I'm glad everyone on this thread has enjoyed virtue signalling by being rude about an eleven year old child up to the point of suggesting nothing she ever says is reliable.

But the OP, or her daughter, wouldn’t necessarily know. Strangely children don’t have “I have SEN” stamped across their head.

Just asked my 14 year old dd and 19yr old trainee teacher dd for their take. They both thought the ' cheating' aspect was less important than the sacking off of the other child's work. ' rude' and 'arrogant' were their descriptors of the op's daughter.The most worrying thing is the op doesn't seem to grasp this. I guess the apple doesnt fall far from the tree!