How far do I push this - whole cohort forced to retake a mock exam

[AlphaApple]

A Level mock exam yesterday. First year of A Levels so counts for predicted grades. It has "come to light" that one or more students cheated, but they cannot identify who. Whole class has been told they must re-sit on Thursday.

DD is distraught. She has two other exams already on Thursday, is tired and stressed and cannot fathom sitting three mocks in one day.

My initial request to her tutor to reconsider has been turned down. I have asked them to escalate.

DD emphatically did not cheat, nor was she even aware of what others were doing. She had her head down for the whole exam.

Does anyone have any advice?

In that case why does she need to resit? The cheaters will get an inflated grade but will know it was because they cheated, they have only disadvantaged themselves. DD knows she didn't cheat so the grade in this exam will be far more useful than a resit when she's tired and annoyed.

Worth exploring if they will do this, then.

I don't disagree with the college's approach to the cohort, though. More accurate to get a resit for all students, with allowances for them being tired, etc, than any other way, IMO.

Having identified that students have cheated, but not identified which, the college would be incorrect to use any of the results for UCAS grade predictions, which they undertake (whether formally or informally) to be done in a fair and accurate way.

So either nobody does a resit and everybody is assessed without recourse to a mock exam grade, or everybody resits (with a methodology for any students who miss the resit, just as there would be for ill students in the regular mocks)

This happened at the school I work at.

it’s normal to use last years exams for mocks and the exam boards generally keep them in secure areas on their website so they are only accessible for teachers.

most schools and colleges rely quite heavily on mocks for predicted grades. Class work isn’t really suitable.

our cohort resat.

Are they actually going to mark the exam she just sat?

That’s ludicrous Apple. At a minimum you should insist that the best grade stands. Sounds like they are spectacularly mismanaging this.

What do you mean by “best grade”?

ETA and how would you manage it?

I would be surprised if they do, given the results are unusable

It’s not ideal but not wholly unreasonable. Although if she needs a specific grade, I would be asking the school what provisions they will make to be fair to her sitting three exams in one day as not all students will be having to do that I imagine?

It’s not common but it occasionally happens in universities, generally when ways of calculating borderlines change - exam boards may then calculate both ways of grading and give the student whichever mark advantages them most. In this instance OP could ask for the better (or average) of the two marks. Frankly I think the teachers will have an extremely good idea who has cheated - certainly after they see the marks if not before - and penalising the ones who didn’t really isn’t on.

@Igmum unless I misunderstand you, that’s applying two mark schemes to the same paper, rather than averaging a paper and a re-sit?

Frankly I think the teachers will have an extremely good idea who has cheated - certainly after they see the marks if not before - and penalising the ones who didn’t really isn’t on.

Perhaps. But what if they are wrong and Lazy Jane or Inattentive Jim just got lucky revising the topics that came up rather than cheating.

OP (reasonably) hasn’t said the issue, but a printed list of quotations doesn’t make you hugely better at interpretation, say: it’s still cheating but might not shift marks by much.

And I don’t really see it as penalising anyone in particular. It’s a PITA for the whole cohort and they may do less well because of the disruption - but as a cohort, the teachers can correct for that in the predictions.

Yes. As I say it’s not common and generally used when rules on borderlines change (so could be average, number of credits, weighted by year, any combination of these). The changes don’t affect many people and since there are generally some who take longer to graduate for various reasons and who joined under different regulations then exam boards may have a few years of transition when it’s whichever rules advantage the students.

Thanks @Igmum - I don’t really see how that maps to this situation though?

Her tutor said she would mark hers.

Then I would let that mark stand, and tell the school DD can't sit the replacement one. You'll have to take whatever consequences they give, but you'll know whether she's heading for an A (keep going as she is) or a B (needs to put in more work).

It was the principle of no detriment rather than the technicalities I thought were important

Thanks all, it seems they are not wholly unreasonable to repeat the exam and DD is not wholly unreasonable to not sit it.

She’s going to sleep on it.

Better than the entire cohort having their results nullified because a group that got away with cheating decided to do it again in the final exams, though.

What a balanced and reasonable conclusion, OP ❤️ are you new here 😀?

This seems so unfair. I'd be well narked. I'm struggling to understand, Why can't a proper investigation actually be done, because it clearly hasn't been done properly to date.

"It's come to light" .... "that one or more person cheated". How? What does that even mean? How come to light? And why can't they narrow it down and do a proper full investigation to find out what happened and who the one cheat or small number of cheats were? Why should the whole peer group be penalised?

Because of leadership's inability to investigate properly.

On a very minor scale I keep having this with my ds2's HoY, who I'm started to dislike. He gives blanket bans for massive groups. Phoned me to complain/warn me ds2 was involved in something, that tonnes of them playing football, turns out my ds2 wasn't even in school, was at the dentist.

It's just a matter of principle. Like OP's. I massively resent unfair banal blanket bans, especially when it stems from the fact that the member of staff can't be bothered to do their job properly and do a proper thorough investigation.

OP's situation is mine only tripley awful. The stress of another extra unplanned mock is just not right, doesn't sit well with me.

I'd be most unhappy and emailing to say so.

@Oblomov25 OP has said she has more detail but doesn't want to put it on here. I have given the example of a dropped typed formula sheet or list of quotations - if this was found on the floor or in a pile of collected scrap paper, then they would not be able to tie it to one person. What 'proper investigation' would do that, if it wasn't spotted at the time and there is no CCTV in the exam hall?

The students go on work experience next week and break up after that. It's now or never for a resit.

Depends. If they found reference notes in the toilet and a significant number used the toilet during the exam, that would make it clear cheating was going on but not whether everybody went (and it wouldn't have been recorded who went unless they had toilet breaks + extra time for toilet breaks as part of access arrangements) and accessed the materials, especially as more appeared to go than usual, for example.

I'm impressed that a college has the capacity for mocks at the same time as the actual exams are running, though.

I don’t want to give too much detail as it’s a quite specific and unusual situation, but essentially the students were required to hand in phones before the exam but it wasn’t properly checked, so some students had their phones on them and used them during the exam.

DD had her head down and didn’t see who used their phones but her classmates did see, so they know exactly who was cheating and who wasn’t.

There is a chance she could have 3 actual A Level exams scheduled for the same day. It does happen and they sit them (as long as it doesn’t go over a certain amount of hours)