I’m 50 and a teacher. A whole year has just done a mock exam and after all the papers were marked and returned, my boss came to see me. She said that a single pupil had confessed that he and his classmates had done the paper before. My class. When she told me this, I was totally bewildered and clueless. She said that I’d been in a meeting where we’d all agreed that the exam paper that had been sent (by some company that writes practice exam papers) was too difficult for the pupils, so we’d use this alternative one instead.
I remember that discussion about the difficulty of the paper, mostly because I actually didn’t think it was beyond them and I wanted to just let them give it a go. However, I was in a minority, so I just let it go. I do not remember any subsequent discussion about which paper we would use instead.
Even when my boss said “Your class had apparently done this paper before”, I still didn’t have any recollection of it. I turned to the back of my planner, where all my marks are, and there they are: they did it back in November and I marked it and returned it to them. My boss said she’d had a look in their “good work” folder and she saw them in there. They’re not a particularly able group - I must have taken them through it question by question. again, I have no memory of this.
I have a meeting with the Head Teacher tomorrow. I’m quite calm because this was 100% a genuine mistake but I’m afraid she might say that I was cheating or that this is malpractice. The worst case scenario is that I could lose the registration that I need to teach. I have many menopausal symptoms and this isn’t the first time I’ve made a mistake at work, but this is the worst.