Cheating in a mock gcse exam

[fadingg]

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?

So suppose an examiner gets 20 almost-identical answers, are you saying no questions would be raised about this with the school?
(Obviously this is less significant in a maths exam than a history one)

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

This is a mock GCSE. That means it is the actual GCSE paper sat this year by GCSE students or an approximation via the exam board, not something the teacher has put together.

OP

If dd has learned and studied she has nothing to fear from the teacher checking.

I've done this, in my case the student claimed that they had not copied the paper I had in front of me but had used all the same resources as someone with a PhD to create word for word the same paper. Including their american spelling.

So, as she would not admit it I asked her to explain certain words and ideas to me.

Someone who had not cheated would be able to answer the questions eg if someone has written about the renal system I would expect them to be able to name the parts of the kidney and what each part does.

What subject?

Because I can see the argument for how just regurgitating answers isn't beneficial more for something like English than for physics?

For the sciences, we definitely learned definitions off by heart — the idea was that when it came up in an exam we didn't have to waste time on thinking how to explain it for relatively few marks. We'd then have more time for interpretation or long answer questions. We also definitely did some work on key words that get the marks.

I'm not sure it's really cheating. It's a bit of a nuisance in that it isn't an accurate representation (if she has seen it before), but to call it cheating seems unfair to me. 'Cheat' is a very nasty thing to call somebody.

I thought schools would use the previous year's papers, that hadn't been released for practice yet?

If the school made material available to the pupils that contained answers to questions identical to those then asked in the exam then the whole matter is entirely their incompetence. I think that the accusation of cheating is totally unreasonable and the teacher should apologise and all sanctions withdrawn. OP you should settle for nothing less.

Hm! I'm wondering if this is my dd's school.

She tells me that a certain number of students realised the year 10 year exams would be last year's GCSE papers (in sciences I think it was) and they got up the answers from the web and just memorised the answers.

She says it's pretty obvious those that did it because firstly they've scored around 2 grades better than they usually do in the tests.

The school is taking it very seriously. Much more seriously than I would. I'd call them in and tell them they've mucked up their mock for themselves. It hasn't given them a good opportunity to learn where their weaknesses are and have a good practice in sitting the exams. They've cheated themselves rather than anyone else.

However the school is doing similar to what you describe.
If it is the same school, then most of the children have admitted it-in fact a number were boasting before the test.

I'm not totally sure I'd call it cheating strictly speaking. However it was done to try and gain a better result than they should get, so I don't think it should be ignored, as it does need to be stopped for the pupil's sake, as it will have a detrimental effect on them.

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

It's not cheating. It's not going to help if the questions are different, but I don't see how it's cheating. I memorised my own model answer for my A level German exam and managed to twist it to fit the question that was asked. Was that cheating too (it was the corrected version from my lower sixth exam and then I did the same with the corrected version from my mock).

Small update:
The teacher won't share the exam paper and now won't be asking my child to talk about it viva style either. She is simply put down as a cheat.

I have called the school to discuss and they haven't got back to me as yet, five days on. End of term I guess.

OP if the teacher is not responding it is probably because they are in a panic over having screwed up setting a mock where the Q and A are available online. The teacher concerned should apologised for having accused kids of cheating and acknowledge the mistake.

I don't think 5 days is acceptable in terms of getting back to you. I would contact the office (if you email an individual and they are off sick, it won't go anywhere else) and go higher up.

That isn’t cheating at all. I would suggest you make an appointment with the head - seems like the teacher is picking on your DD for no reason. Is there a target perhaps for teachers to be seen taking action on cheats?

If it is cheating to memorise the answers then it is idiotic to use a past paper for the questions. Suggest thst the teacher write her own questions.

I find this quite outrageous.

If the teacher wishes to not only accuse your daughter of cheating, but record it as a fact without further investigation, I would say that she and the school are at the very least absolutely obliged to share their evidence - i.e. the paper, your daughter's answer and the model answer in question.

The fact that this teacher has accused your daughter in front of her class before any process had been gone through is also outrageous and unprofessional.

If it is correct that your daughter's answer is very close to the model answer, my suspicion would be that your daughter has indeed looked up (presumably legitimately available) past papers and model answers as part of her revision. I cannot at all consider this cheating and it is often recommended as good practice as part of for revision in all sorts of exams as a way of testing your own knowledge.

It is absurd to then punish her for a) having a better than average memory for what she's read and b) her teacher's decision to use a past paper as a mock exam. I'd also be astonished if the school itself did not regularly advise pupils to revise using past papers to test themselves.

However, if the adults at her school can't even decide whether such a revision method constitutes cheating or not (which in my opinion would be ridiculous) I wouldn't be surprised if your daughter panicked and lied about it after the fact, although I think she'd do far better to argue her case honestly!

Of course it's important to make sure that your daughter has actually understood the underlying material rather than relying on what may be a fantastic memory for a pre-written answer (because she will never have seen the actual exam paper or any model answers for those questions and it won't serve her interest to just regurgitate answers to different ones).

But there are ways of ensuring that without her teacher seeking to deflect blame for the obvious flaw in her (lazy?) plan to use a past, freely available exam paper as a mock exam, knowing that at least some conscientious students would use them as part of revision.

I'm generally on the side of parents and school presenting a united front, but unless there is significantly more to this story, I would be having strong words with the school and taking the matter further if necessary to prevent this sort of nonsense being recorded as a mark against my child.

I used to write model answers and memorise them for exams. Would never had occurred to me that would be cheating. I learned very effectively that way too. You poor dd. I hope this wont knock her confidence when it comes to studying in future. Its good that she has you sticking up for her.

The update is shocking.
Really poor. How is that a thorough investigation?

What do you plan to do now OP? Email HoY or ring and ask to speak to Deputy Head? Both?

I'm going to take it further I think. As it stands, she has been labelled a cheat and there have been no consequences at all, so if it is correct and she cheated we need to deal with that as her parents. I'd like to see the paper and why it indicates cheating before I do so though. I think that's reasonable.

However she raised a complaint against this teacher last month and my concern is that her card is marked as a result.

OP what subject?

In maths we had a few who had clearly found the mark scheme and included things like "15 nfww" as the answer. The nfww stands for "not from wrong working" so it was clear students had copied the mark scheme.

I'd say it totally depends on the subject and what her answers are.

Using a past exam for a mock isn't lazy. It's common practise and exam boards release papers and mark schemes so quickly now it is difficult to get papers that students can't find.

Most exam boards don't produce locked down mock papers (nor should they).

I wouldn't feel confident writing my own paper and setting grade boundaries, at least an actual paper gives a true picture of the grade a student is at.

It's biology. She got an 8 in biology and a 7 in chemistry, so there is a grade difference between them. There is no accusation of cheating on the chemistry paper. The issue seems to be a five mark maths question with no working out written down, which could be cheating, or could equally be arrogance as my child has been told off for pulling this stunt again and again in maths.

I don't think it's the school mentioned above - there were two kids accused in science. The school had a problem in maths and the accused kids had to resit, so not sure why she hasn't had to.

A calculation question is not a model answer question.

Clearly, regurgitating a model answer is what many students are taught to do. In Science, this would be simple definitions, worth one or two marks.

If she has done a calculation question without workings, then fair enough. It’s a risky strategy in case the answer is wrong, so no credit for the stages. Biology calculations are often simple arithmetic, such as working out a percentage, so feasible without workings. Not so with Chemistry mass calculations.

Surely in that case she needs to get her biology teacher to talk to her maths teacher (or vice versa)?

Like a PP says, a calculation is not a model answer. Which is it? Your dd is playing a very foolish game not showing working out in Maths. Every year students lose marks for not showing working and getting an incorrect answer.

My DS was in an almost identical situation last year. He did a lot of extra revision at home including online Maths past papers. Teachers did not tell him not to. By coincidence his mock exam was the past paper he had completed the night before so he did much better than expected and was called out on it and accused of cheating. I was not informed, it was between him and teaching staff. When DS told me I did offer to talk to the head of year but DS refused to let me intervene.

He was made to sit another mock exam in which he also did very well. Teachers still predicted a lower grade in comparison to the results but he proved himself in the actual GCSE and achieved the same high grade as he had achieved in both the mock exams.

It seems really unfair and over dramatic to label these children as cheats when all they are doing is being diligent with their revision!

Good luck to your DC with her future studies.

IME, Y11 mocks are the previous June’s paper, which is password controlled. Y10 papers are the June paper from the year before, so fine if the Y10 exams are in May.

Edexcel have mock sets with passwords, while we are in the early years of the qualification.

We always encourage students to be familiar with exam board websites and all the resources that are available to them. We can’t punish them for being thorough and diligent. I can’t believe that a student would successfully memorise numerical answers.

Teachermaths, I fully agree, and she's hearing it from me at length.