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Original poster

DD accused of cheating at school

277 replies

Grizzzly · 30/04/2022 08:17

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.

OP posts:
Discovereads · 30/04/2022 12:40

@DrRuthGalloway
The work the other child produced was of lower quality. It was shorter, it was poorly spelled with incorrect parts and the handwriting was poor.

Which you’d expect from a child who spent all the time that was supposed to be spent working on the project watching YouTube videos and playing games. Lack of effort always results in lower quality work.

PolkadotsAndMoonbeams · 30/04/2022 12:41

Bring told off for "telling tales" isn't the same as being accused of lying. Generally a teacher knows very well that the tales are at least partly true! I would say it's used to teach people not to get other people into trouble deliberately or unkindly.

However, in the context of group work where it's obviously a struggle, I don't think that was the way to deal with it. Pupils need to learn how to work together, and perhaps adding something like a lesson halfway through the project where the teacher went around and looked at progress would have been a better way of dealing with it.

Instead it was dismissed, and OP's DD took matters into her own hands in completely the wrong way.

ldontWanna · 30/04/2022 12:42

The OP's child judged that contribution as inferior and attempted to cheat her way to a prize with no consideration of the other girl's feelings.

Which is why the teacher shouldn't have made it competitive and made it clear the children are assessed on their team work skills,not the content produced.

JulesRimetStillGleaming · 30/04/2022 12:43

The other child is only 11 too. Psychology has a huge role to play in achievement and if she was feeling demoralised or belittled then it's really hard to achieve under those circumstances. If the OPs DD had encouraged her then she might've produced something better or perhaps what she did produce was absolutely her best work. The teacher would have known that.

From what happened next I can guarantee that OP's DD didn't encourage her or value her contribution which suggests she didn't support her through the process. The YouTube might've come after comments were made or attitude to suggest she wasn't good enough.

I think the mistake the teacher made was offering a prize.

Discovereads · 30/04/2022 12:44

ImAvingOops · 30/04/2022 11:42

It is important to remember that these kids are only 11. The dd was stuck between a rock and a hard place - the teacher washed her hands of it when the child tried to get help. I'd be really cross about that because it's coming across that the teacher set work and then cba to do the work themselves to ensure it went smoothly.

Did the teacher give guidance to the class on how best to work together and go through various ways they might split the work? You can't expect kids to just know these things, they have to be taught how to do it and the teacher had a responsibility to check in and see what each group is doing and to address issues raised as they progress.

Exactly. The teacher incentivised the DD to try and make the whole project as good as possible by offering a prize for best project (not best contribution). The teacher then refused to believe the DD when she told her that the other girl was just playing games/watching YouTube and not putting the work in and sent her off with no guidance. The teacher mismanaged the whole project from start to finish and I also suspect did not give these children any lessons on team motivation and peer to peer support.

whynotwhatknot · 30/04/2022 12:46

So your dd tried to tell the teacher the other girl wasnt doing anyting and got called a tell tale

what was she supposed to do then

PolkadotsAndMoonbeams · 30/04/2022 12:46

Although if it were my DD, I'd have probably had them together at my house at the table and supervised. That way I could have done a bit of gentle encouraging and reined the DD in if necessary.

And yes, maybe they should be working alone, but they're 11 and probably haven't done it before. We use facilitators at work for certain group projects, and we're all a lot older than that!

thing47 · 30/04/2022 12:50

I asked why she didn’t just speak to the teacher and she said she’d tried but was told to stop tell-tailing.

Surely this is a crucial part of the story? If OP's DD had approached the teacher and tried to raise her concerns, then she did exactly the right thing. Her concerns weren't addressed and worse, the teacher wouldn't even listen. Sounds like a spectacularly crap teacher to me.

As for what she did next, well it was clearly wrong to try to pretend the work was the other girl's. What she should have done is say she was editing the other girl's work to improve it Grin. Every writer in the world has their work edited and re-written, and changes suggested – that's why book publishing companies and newspapers and magazine employ 'editors'. But at 11 it's hard to mount that sort of defence…

ldontWanna · 30/04/2022 12:54

JulesRimetStillGleaming · 30/04/2022 12:43

The other child is only 11 too. Psychology has a huge role to play in achievement and if she was feeling demoralised or belittled then it's really hard to achieve under those circumstances. If the OPs DD had encouraged her then she might've produced something better or perhaps what she did produce was absolutely her best work. The teacher would have known that.

From what happened next I can guarantee that OP's DD didn't encourage her or value her contribution which suggests she didn't support her through the process. The YouTube might've come after comments were made or attitude to suggest she wasn't good enough.

I think the mistake the teacher made was offering a prize.

She also ignored OP's DD when she raised concerns about the other girl.

It's also very possible it was a poor pairing to begin with.

We do group work/mixed ability at my school. We are mindful about who we put together. Some groups,especially with only 2 children, would be setting both children up to fail.

SamphirethePogoingStickerist · 30/04/2022 12:57

Grizzzly · 30/04/2022 08:23

Yes kind of, they had to each contribute to each section of the project and highlight who had wrote what. The idea was to show they had worked together.

Show quote history

Back your DD in essence only. What she did was silly, obvious and absolutely wrong! BUT tell her that next time what she has to do is accept the shite work from friend exactly as it is AND she needs to go to the teacher, when it is handed in, and say something like, I hope I will not be marked down because of the lack of effort my work partner put in.

She will need to learn how to do this in a calm, effective manner, as she may have to do it again!

I remember having to do it at University. Out of 6 of us only 3 were doing the work and, when the other 3 handed their work in it was so bad, plagiarised (from a prominent text book) I panicked. I spoke to the course tutor and showed her what I meant and basically said that I wasn't prepared to put my name to the submission papers as I was aware of the plagiarism and wanted no part of it. I was told, initially, that I should have helped them out more!!! Eventually I persuaded her to talk to them and they removed their work from the submission. The rest of us had 2 choices, be graded on only half of the task. getting only half marks, or slam something else together last minute. Obviously I, as a mture student, didn't accept that and demanded better treatment - which we got.

As a lecturer I saw it in both FE and HE. Sadly it isn't unusual. The lazy gobshites expect their peers to dig them out of a hole in order to save their own grades. Peer pressure prevents many from doing what I did. The bravest refuse to play that game and have no trouble saying why, but that is really hard to do when you are young and still trying to make friends, find your way!

Best your DD learns a vaulabel lesson from this. How to navigate the laziness of others and not to cheat, even in this kind of situation!

DrRuthGalloway · 30/04/2022 12:58

Discovereads · 30/04/2022 12:40

@DrRuthGalloway
The work the other child produced was of lower quality. It was shorter, it was poorly spelled with incorrect parts and the handwriting was poor.

Which you’d expect from a child who spent all the time that was supposed to be spent working on the project watching YouTube videos and playing games. Lack of effort always results in lower quality work.

Sorry to pull rank but as an ed psych for 20 years, effort has surprisingly little to do with a student's success overall. Yes an individual can expend more or less effort on tasks and do better or worse. But it's absolutely not the case that high achievers are high achievers because they all work harder and low achievers are low achievers because they all put little effort in.

Specifically, even a person who is able who is putting in little effort will not suddenly forget how to spell or how to write legibly.

Which brings me back to; this other child has challenges of some sort, and the OP's child, who does not, failed to accommodate or respect her contribution...this may have been the "real" assessment of the task.

burnoutbabe · 30/04/2022 12:59

i had this in a uni group project (luckily i am nearly 50 though)

Uni lecturer asked us to confirm who did what so i made it crystal clear to all participants to say who was doing what slide and if anyone did not want to participate (it was luckily not part of final grade) to let me know so i could confirm that to the lecturer with their reason (another essay due etc)

But that was basically me, used to managing projects, demanding accountability. Now some people worked together on slides and i don't know how much one took other but hey ho.

(and on the other side, we had to do another group presentation for an external project, one person asked if they could "make over" the slides before we submitted to make them look better - yes that is fine i said. they then sent them 20 mins before due with everyone BUT MINE's overhauled.

So i had to decide - submit pre- made over work and dismiss all the design bits done by another - or submit with it in and my bits now looking very different.

So went with the latter for team harmony and when i presented my bit, made it clear that OF COURSE my bit would look the same as the other slides (it was a prototype of a mobile app) but the designer had run out of time. Seemed the best option to get through the whole thing smoothly. But was very annoying having to present an inconsistent presentation to an external "client".

chisanunian · 30/04/2022 12:59

Bloody hell - talk about making a conscientious hard-working child feel shit about themselves.

DrRuthGalloway · 30/04/2022 13:01

whynotwhatknot · 30/04/2022 12:46

So your dd tried to tell the teacher the other girl wasnt doing anyting and got called a tell tale

what was she supposed to do then

It perhaps depends on what she said.

If she had said "Sir, I don't know how to help Jenny in this task, she is finding it hard" she might have got a very different response to "Sir, Jenny is being lazy, watching youtube and refuses to do anything"

Of course this means the teacher's expectations of OP's daughter were probably too high.

Sirzy · 30/04/2022 13:01

Did the teacher expect them to meet up out of school to do it? Seems very unrealistic for primary school.

DrRuthGalloway · 30/04/2022 13:04

chisanunian · 30/04/2022 12:59

Bloody hell - talk about making a conscientious hard-working child feel shit about themselves.

And what about the kid who struggles and whose contribution was rejected? Do her feelings not matter at all?

It was dishonourable.

ldontWanna · 30/04/2022 13:11

@DrRuthGalloway if the other child got hurt and upset then that is entirely down to the teacher.

SamphirethePogoingStickerist · 30/04/2022 13:15

If she had said "Sir, I don't know how to help Jenny in this task, she is finding it hard" she might have got a very different response to "Sir, Jenny is being lazy, watching youtube and refuses to do anything"

So now, from your 20 years as an Ed Psych, you are suggesting that an 11 year old, who has already lied to try and make this situation better, should have told a DIFFERRENT LIE!!!

ImAvingOops · 30/04/2022 13:18

Dishonourable? She's 11, she's not a General in the army!

DrRuthGalloway · 30/04/2022 13:18

SamphirethePogoingStickerist · 30/04/2022 13:15

If she had said "Sir, I don't know how to help Jenny in this task, she is finding it hard" she might have got a very different response to "Sir, Jenny is being lazy, watching youtube and refuses to do anything"

So now, from your 20 years as an Ed Psych, you are suggesting that an 11 year old, who has already lied to try and make this situation better, should have told a DIFFERRENT LIE!!!

How is that a lie?

Genuinely?

lollipoprainbow · 30/04/2022 13:21

My own dd is good at everything too. She's clever, she's sporty, she's artistic and she's beautiful.

That's nice, why did you feel the need to boast about this and then do the OP down by saying your wonderful dd wouldn't have made the other girl feel bad. Please save us from people going on about their amazing children.

Discovereads · 30/04/2022 13:24

But it's absolutely not the case that high achievers are high achievers because they all work harder and low achievers are low achievers because they all put little effort in.

@DrRuthGalloway
good thing I didn’t say that then. All I’m saying is that the only evidence we have…that of little effort does in fact result in low quality work. Any claims of the other girl being “less able” are purely speculative for which there is no evidence.

JulesRimetStillGleaming · 30/04/2022 13:25

What's missing in all of this though is the way the child approached the teacher. There's a big difference in saying that I'm struggling to get the task done and blaming the other child for being lazy or stupid. The teacher probably was right to pick up on it if it was the latter but then should have drilled down into what was actually going on and taught them some strategies for appreciating each other, working together as a team etc etc

At 11 I think this is a big ask to expect a child to navigate all of this. But I don't think teaching the child that the teacher is useless is the solution! Otherwise all you're doing is saying when you feel bad, look for someone to blame! That's not a good life lesson.

Discovereads · 30/04/2022 13:27

Sir, I don't know how to help Jenny in this task, she is finding it hard"

Yeah thats a lie. Knowing someone is finding something hard requires some effort to be put forth in front of you. And as we know, the girl put forth zero effort in front of the DD.

Confusion101 · 30/04/2022 13:29

Not 0 effort as she did submit work! 0 effort would've meant no work submitted at all