Cheating in a mock gcse exam

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Could I please ask, what the normal process would be when a child is accused of cheating in an internal mock exam? Should we be informed, should she have any right to appeal or state her case?

My daughter has been accused of cheating. Her predicted grade for this time next year is a 6 in this subject (other subjects 8s), but she had worked hard to improve and managed an 8 on her mock paper.

The teacher has stated (in front of the class and written on her paper) that she cheated by memorising the model answer paper, whilst acknowledging that she had no prior knowledge of which past paper would be chosen, didn't copy from another child and didn't have the model paper in the exam. Simply that her wording is too close to the model answers so must have been memorised.

My daughter now has to attend a 1:1 session to explain her answers on the paper and prove her knowledge verbally. There may be consequences if she cannot. As you can imagine she is somewhat embarrassed and demoralised.

Is this the usual way of dealing with cheating? And frankly, is this even cheating?

How is memorizing cheating or are they saying that she has used someone else's answer and not understood it herself?

I think if your dd looked at all past papers that could have been chosen for the mock exam and learnt all the answers to the various papers then that is cheating. She is cheating herself as the mock exams are an opportunity to see what she knows and what she needs to work on and in memorising answers to past papers (if that is what she did) she has cheated herself of that opportunity.

I don't think it's usual for a teacher to address the issue of possible cheating in front of the whole class.
Did she memorise past paper answers?
Ime it's perfectly possible (if you have practised enough papers ) to produce answers in the exam which are very close to the standard answers in the mark scheme. I saw this with my ds - he had done so many past papers he knew exactly what to write and the order tended to be the same as the mark scheme.

She is adamant that she hasn't memorised the papers, or practised any other than those given to her in class. I do believe her, though I am also aware that I may be naive in doing so.

Arnoldbee, the class teacher is suggesting that she has memorised the past paper model answer, not copied from anyone else or anything. Presumably memorised them all as she had no way of knowing which paper they would sit.

Surely memorising answers is pretty much the idea of an exam?

Dd practised using old papers and in her actual exam a 6 mark question came up exactly the same as on a previous paper. She remembered what the model answer was...I don't consider that cheating. Exams don't really assess understanding well, it's often more of a memory test.

Don't you learn work by memorising it? How can she be blamed for using her memory? And, surely, what you know is what you have remembered.

Had she seen that paper and the mark scheme? I've had this happen before. An accusation of cheating is daft, but the teacher wanting to know if it has happened is not. The importance of year 10 exams is mostly in what it tells the teacher and the student about what they have learned and understood. Memorizing a mark scheme doesn't help with that really.

Just seen she says not. If you want to pursue it, I'd ask to see the paper and the mark scheme, and get the teacher to explain why they think she has. I've had children deny point blank having seen the mark scheme, but then use mark scheme terminology in their answers because they've learned without thinking (e.g. directions on how a graph is used, rather than the actual work on the graph - that was a classic tell!)

Isn’t learning at that stage memorising? Perhaps the teacher should prepare her examination questions a bit better!

Then I'm a cheat. I have a brilliant short term memory and memorized loads, including the gospel of Mark verbatim which I used to answer the questions. I don't understand...

If GCSEs were papers you had seen before, with the mark scheme, then yes, this would be no problem. But GCSEs test from a large domain, not the very limited domain of a single mark scheme, and test other things, like sequencing information in an answer, problem solving, interpreting information, that are not simple tests of recall. In order to do my job, I would ask the question. Privately though.

In my subject we use real exam papers to give us the best possible idea of how students are doing (so we can use real grade boundaries and mark schemes etc.) We sometimes have issues with kids working out which year the papers may be from and memorising the mark schemes rather than revising properly for their exams. Obviously this gives them artificially high mock grades which aren't reflective of what they will be likely to get in their real GCSEs.

If it's a published paper, she may have had access beforehand and used it to practice and learn. It doesn't mean she intentionally cheated. At some point after the best option would have been to be honest, but she's still young. You need to get to the bottom of this, as her predicted grade may affect her next decision. Could the school put together a paper for her to sit after school, so see how she gets on with that?

My dds chemistry teacher said something similar to pupils, but she was the only science teacher who did not give them a practice paper for their revision, and the paper they were given was the first one that came up when they searched for one themselves! ,(because they are conscientious students). She seems to have now realised her mistake and calmed down about it. Of course my dd is not taking her mock result as accurate because she had already seen the paper.

How is that cheating?

She didn't cheat.
She will go and do the viva, show her knowledge and they should realise that.
It would only be cheating if she knew in advance what paper they would be using and she intentionally went looking for it.

A girl at school felt bad about her greek exam. They had used a paragraph from the bible as the translation. It was the same passage she had read in English at the carol service earlier in the year, and she had looked it up in their ancient greek bible they happened to have it at home. So as soon as she saw it she recognised it. That's good luck, not cheating.

I agree that this is not cheating. She prepared well and has a good memory. Both will stand her in good stead for real exams.

This happens with our mocks every year. Although we use “locked mocks” produced by the exam board which are theoretically difficult for pupils to get hold of, a number still manage to do so via various websites/tutors.

Although it can be a little bit annoying to not get a completely accurate picture of their revision, I think pupils going out of their way to find past papers are the most diligent as they’re the most effective way to revise. I also think that for maths - my subject - the papers are pretty complex and these pupils rarely just memorise the answer and get the marks; rather, they learn the method and then repeat that. Which, to me, actually shows a level of understanding which is to be applauded. I wouldn’t accuse a student of cheating in this case (Googling the paper under the desk during the exam, on the oh her hand....)

It should be your own work you memorise though, not the work of a teacher/other pupil/exam board.

I am a university lecturer and regularly advise my students to look and practice past papers before an exam. If my questions are close enough to the past one then I would expect the nervous students (those doing one past paper after the other) to produce answers that are structurally and often even linguistically similarly to some of the past ones (though not word for word as they would not be given a practice answer but just a practice question).

she cheated by memorising the model answer paper

Ummm, isn’t that how studying works? By memorising information about a subject?

I would ask to see the school’s written policy on what constitutes cheating as I don’t believe this is considered cheating.

That isn't cheating. If it's fine to practise using all of the available past papers, how can it be cheating to use that info when writing answers in the exam?

That’s not cheating!! What a joke

A model answer isnt't part of a past paper though. I would definitely consider it a sign that a student hadn't done the work for themselves if I saw a regurgitated model answer I had given them in a mock exam.
It was sheer luck that that question came up. If she cannot structure an answer for herself it will be of no help when the real exam comes.

So, if you can remember a model answer word for word, you have to rephrase it in your own words?