Cheating in MFL oral exam am I just being naive?

[middleclassonbursary]

At lunch today with friends I was talking to their DC's asking how GCSE's are going, one told me that in the MFL oral exam the teacher asks the question then held up the answer written on a piece of paper. I was stunned then someone else's DC (different school) said his school did it. My DC said his school didn't but his friends with friends at other schools say it's common practice.
I'm completely stunned, this in my book is cheating. One said we do it because everyone else does it.

Oh and I'll just mention that I posted on MN and it appears I wasn't the only one who knew about thus sort of thing going on so perhaps you should investigate the whole thing and fail everyone in 2014,
Whilst your on the phone who do we contact about Vivas for under graduates because that might be corrupt as well.

That's odd, Hercule I'm in my early forties and our teachers didn't do our O-level oral exams we had external examiners in to do them. I wonder if it differed by exam board?

I'm in my late 40's definitely outside examiners and no prepared answers.

This kind of thing certainly went on in my GCSE French class 12 years ago. It was an open secret.

I love Ragwort's strategy, though. That is genius... .

Our O-level French written paper always featured as one question a "picture story" -- four pictures telling a fairly obvious story, and you had to write 200 words in French telling the story. I decided that there were only a certain number of places you could actually set a story so I prepared in advance (and committed to memory) 6-8 different sentences in French to use as my opening sentence once I saw the pictures: "The refreshing breeze blew lightly along the beach, wafting the scent of the sea into the air, and the seagulls called out overhead," that sort of thing. I reckoned that it used up about 10% of my required wordcount and also made me look good. I ended up going with "The purple mountains that rose majestically over the horizon were capped with snow".

Yes my GCE O and A levels involved prose translation and an oral exam upon it, an unseen translation and unseen topic of conversation by an external examiner. No teacher was privy to the latter.

The students studying GCSE languages today would not last five minutes.

"Hello I'm Mrs Middleclassonbursary I was at a lunch the other and two boys from St X and Y told me that their teacher helped then in their exams, the children's names were A and B

Yep, exactly this. Ok they might ignore you, but you might be the second or third person to have said this, and prompt an investigation.

Maybe they just contact and ask the school, and the school denies it. But it might stop them cheating the next year.

I can't imagine any school would stopping students who want to do A level in this scenario. They would want them to be assesses properly, but it is not their fault the teacher cheated.

Oh Debbie, I remember that ploy. "Early one morning in the summer holidays the sun shone brightly and the sky was cloudless". Could probably still write it in French. An external examiner for the oral. We were told we would be asked about our family, and if we had no brothers or sisters to invent a few to keep the examiner off more difficult subjects. I was asked if I was an 'enfant unique' - an expression I'd not heard before. Fortunately, after a few heartbeats, I guessed correctly.

Must have differed by exam board I suppose - I can definitely remember my German teacher doing my GCSE one.

"Maybe they just contact and ask the school and the school denies it" which obviously they will, because I don't think they're going to "oh yeah we do cheat, it's a fair cop but the league tables are to blame!"

Why exactly would this stop them doing it again next year? I've been asked not to draw any obvious parallels but they've got away with it, we know know those who cheat don't stop unless they are actually caught.

Why exactly would this stop them doing it again next year?

I would think they would be concerned that they might be more likely to be subject to an inspection....

Does anyone have any comments on a somewhat bizarre occurrence that happened at a school I know? After 10 minutes of an A2 exam (ie after reading the paper) a candidate indicated they felt ill. The student was led out of the examination room. I understand the exam paper was a bit fiendish. All the other candidates finished the exam. The "ill" candidate was taken to the medical room and apparently sat in isolation for 4 hours but then retook the exam in the afternoon! The other students were convinced that the first sight of exam questions induced panic and fear of failure. They were also convinced "help" was received in the medical room, so the candidate resat the exam after a bit of coaching! Place at Cambridge University duly assured!

I did contact the exam board. No problems with doing this apparently! They trust the schools.

I thought if a candidate were genuinely ill and obtained a doctors cert they would receive their predicted grade? Presumably if it was pretence the student could have carried it on and been taken to the doctors?

I agree that the candidate should not have been allowed to leave and restart after seeing the questions but I also think it would have been pretty difficult to memorise the questions in the first few minutes. Even 4 hours cribbing is not going to make much difference if they really didn't know it. Perhaps there were mental health issues that the school was aware of but kept confidential?

middleclass you do not presumably know whether the school is explicitly allowing / encouraging this cheating, or implicitly turning a blind eye, or whether the teachers are doing it off their own back. Well run organisations be they exam boards or schools welcome being informed about weaknesses / problems. There is in place for schools a system of checks and balances in relation to exams with OFQUAL, governing bodies and School Inspectors all having a role, to make sure this sort of bad practise does not become endemic. I am quite sure that details of the schools concerned and the fact that this thread apparently exposes it as not uncommon ought to provoke some form of reaction

As a parent of a dyslexic child I have had a difficult time with OFQUAL's tightening up of the regulations on extra time. I know only of parents who had to battle long and hard to get their child a diagnosis and support, schools that require extensive evidence of need before they even apply for extra time and Ed Psychs who provide reports based on evidence, however apparently OFQUAL and the DofE felt impelled to act by reports of widespread abuse. They felt impelled to take the trust out of the process and instead impose new inflexible regulations they acknowledge discriminate against bright dyslexics. I see no difference in this, make enough noise and things might change though not necessarily for the better

You should contact the exam board and report it directly to them. They will investigate it and can send unannounced inspectors into the school to check how the school is conducting the exams/invigilations.

My DH was a school governor at a local secondary school a few years ago when the students reported to the Head that the teacher had been cheating helping on the mfl oral exams.
DH, as governor, was involved in the ongoing disciplinary and eventual dismissal of said teacher.
Perhaps you, or the other parents, should have encouraged the DC to report this practice.

Food for thought. I will think about it and report back. Thanks all.

Not surprised by this. All kinds of tricks with oral exams such as effectively learning in advance and with all kind of non-exam assessment in other subjects as well. Set up a system where the school/teachers assess their own candidates together with school and teachers having strict targets for exams results and hardly a surprise that teachers will game the system.

DD2 is doing Edexel MFL - for the speaking they are allowed to take in a cue card with 5 or 6 phrases and a picture. So presumably it varies by board. Her teacher is regarded as being a bit mean as he won't help much during the exam (raised eyebrow if you're going drastically wrong is as far as it goes), but another language seems to be much more proactive with the foundation tier students, so agreeing in advance which topics and questions will be used. Whether that is cheating, or the same as the "question spotting" the other subjects do "oh there hasn't been a question on x topic for a few years, we think that's likely to come up this year"; I'm not sure. They still need to be able to answer the questions as they are asked though.

From talking to MFL teachers socially, they all hate the way the GCSE is structured, and what needs to be done to get the students the grades (the rote learning of the writing pieces for eg) but aren't able to do very much about it, as there simply isn't time to teach languages how they used to be taught, with vocab lists and grammar from the start .

Plenty of vocab tests at DS1's school (Year 7) - almost weekly for two MFLs - they only take 10/15 mins at the start of each double lesson. Sometimes the teachers will test orally - picking on individual dcs at random - the vocab gets learnt though!

I would suspect that if it is done as you say it will sound quite obvious on the recordings. Because a lot of people have a reading voice that sounds quite different. Also you'll get a few mispronunciations/stumbling over the words-and possible even a few mutters of "can't read/say it".

I would speak to the exam board and let them go forward.

Also when I did GCSE they went round invigulators (sp?) who would sit in on some of the orals. If those orals were markedly down on the others, then I am certain that would ring alarm bells.

And I'm a bit confused by the person who said their child had dyslexia, so the oral was particularly hard for them. Am I being silly and have missed something obvious? I would have thought it was the easiest part? I certainly found it the easiest as I had nothing written on paper at all.

Are the orals now able to tell them beforehand, or is it just (as when I did GCSE) that the set of questions and topics were fairly predictable? When I did it we were given about 4 topics, and told approximately what the questions we would be asked. We did also have to do a role play, which was unpredictable-I had to say my ear hurt-and I couldn't remember which of two words ear was. I think the other word meant egg! On the basis my teacher didn't laugh, I think I chose the right one.
But if they're predictable, then the students may think they're being told, when actually it's an educated guess. My chemistry teacher used to do a game where he "predicted" the questions in one of the last lessons, and then would show them how to answer. He'd done it for years-back into o-level (which apparently was much harder as much less predictable). The year before me two of his "predicted questions" came up in the exam-the first time he'd had closer than a near miss. He refused to do it after that as he didn't want allegations of cheating.

Not read the whole thread so someone else may have said so, but I have just read a recent OFQUAL report which is recommending quite major changes to the examining of MFL GCSEs, including a more rigorous approach to orals - one possibility it mentions is that these would be done by a representative of the exam board coming to the school rather than by the schools themselves. So I think they are probably aware of this sort of thing.

My GCSE oral in the mid-90s was fairly law abiding, as I remember, though the teacher did occasionally point forwards or back to remind us about tenses!

"one possibility it mentions is that these would be done by a representative of the exam board coming to the school rather than by the schools themselves." - you mean like it was done 20-30 years ago before the grade inflation?

DeWee every dyslexic is different with different strengths and weaknesses and memory and processing difficulties. It isn't just a problem with writing and spelling. She also had the benefit of targeted intervention with her reading writing and spelling at a young age, and given tools and coping strategies, having a learning difficulty does not mean you can't learn at all. She has very poor working memory and processing skills, especially her aural working memory and found having to learn stock phrases etc by heart in another language extremely difficult and also struggled to retrieve them in response to the questions that come up so she was very very hesitant and slow. There was one other section she couldn't cope with, ironically the bits she recovered the marks in were the bits where she could apply her knowledge of grammar and vocabulary which she worked very hard to learn, even though the speed of her writing is at the level of the slowest 10% of the population. She worked with her SEN teacher to develop coping strategies that would enable her to get the best possible marks. It is therefore galling to discover that whilst she worked so hard to overcome problems the field was even further tipped against her.

DeWE

Agree with Shootingthepigeons, oral was not easy for ds either because he has problems remembering long passages in another language. He actually found the spelling in german easy because it is very phonetical. It is the current syle of exams that didn't suit him at all.