Teacher Accused my Son of Teaching:(

[Clarita12345]

A Teacher Accused my son of Cheating...should I complain to the head...?

My son's tutor made him practise past papers exams including the one from 2014. Unlucky..:(.. He sat the same paper for his mocks early January. My son got an A*, but instead of being rewarded & encouraged to keep working hard, he was told off.
I went to see his physics teacher (my colleague!! as I work part time in the same school...), to clarify what he had said to my son... Well, not only he was so defensive in his argument but he told me on my face that me & my son cheated and when I asked him whether my son saw either the paper or the answers in the school, he replied No but my son's tutor is being dishonest when she made my son practise past papers.
I tried to explain to him that none of us knew that the same paper my son practiced would be used for his mocks, he kept repeating that he cheated and that the mark he got was not valid.
Back to the office, I felt so bad, I felt that he didn't handle the situation in a professional way.
Should I complain to the head.!!!

I think it's pretty common for mock exams to be from the last year. The tutor did your son a disservice by giving him this paper, as his targets will now be skewed - I can see why the teacher is pissed off. I am a teacher and a tutor and would never do recent papers until after the mock for this reason. Your son and his teacher won't know what areas to target. I don't think going to the head will achieve anything and would be asking if my son could sit another paper for a mock so the teacher can assess needs and the tutor could work with these needs.

I tutor occasionally and download past papers from exam board websites. They are there for everyone to use! What a wanker that teacher is. Your son could have downloaded it himself and practised - my own kids all did this - and it is not cheating. Cheating is knowing what paper will be set and practicing those answers or bringing materials into exam room. You should complain about his rudeness.

The most recent papers are usually only available on a secure site accessible to schools only-aqa 2014 ones are not public yet.

Yes, go to the head. Your son didn't cheat! All of this was completely out of his hands and it was wrong of his physics teacher to accuse him of wrongdoing, when he'd done nothing wrong!

Agree with haggis most recent are on a secure site. He didn't cheat but his tutor hasn't helped him.

The last session's papers are password protected and not generally available for download from the exam board website. They can often be found somewhere though, so an accusation of cheating is OTT. But there are real benefits to sitting an unseen paper for mocks. The grade is not valid, and actually the main reason we do mocks is to target what we need to work on. That said, however frustrating it is, there's no point in getting angry and calling the student a cheat. That is off. But for his own sake, your DS needs to be honest about how confident he would be taking an unseen paper, and whether that A* is a secure one or not.

I wouldn't have used the term 'cheating' - because it isn't - but if he's already attempted that paper & had feedback, then yes, his mock grade isn't valid.

It's a matter of professional courtesy & common sense for a tutor not to use last year's paper, as it's entirely customary to use them as the Mock. Exam specs change every few years - we use the vast majority of the bank of past papers in class as practices/as Mocks.

Apart from anything else, if I were paying for a tutor, they'd jolly well better be using their own resources, targeted to the individual student's needs. Just going over past papers isn't tutoring.

It's one of my bugbears as a secondary teacher, along with 'my tutor says can you send some work home that I can do with her?'...why yes, I'd love to plan additional tasks & resources so that someone else who clearly lacks the skills to do so can charge £20-30 an hour to watch you attempt them...

I'd accept that your ds's Mock grade is compromised, OP. It's not doing you, or more importantly him, any service to complacently assume that he's in line for a top grade based on a superficially impressive performance on a paper he was re-attempting.

Not your DS' fault.

I'm a tutor and would NEVER use the most recent past paper as a practice - it's almost always the Mock paper.

ravenAK I do sometimes go over past papers in tutoring sessions though, if I feel it will help that student - working through a paper one to one can be really beneficial and IMO a totally valid use of the time. But I also create my own resources and tailor them to the individual needs of students! When I taught secondary your bugbears did my head in too! I particularly remember a particularly unpleasant Year 9 telling me there was no need for him to do anything in class as he had a tutor. OK then.

Yeah, totally different to go over an older paper in detail when tutoring - especially one the student has already attempted. That can be really useful - in fact our in-school 1-1 tutor does a lot of that.

But there are quite a few charlatans out there 'tutoring' who are effectively just logging on to exam boards' past papers - which as has been said upthread are open to everyone - & watching kids plodding through past papers. If, as a parent, that's all you expect, just download the past papers & mark scheme yourself - it'll be a damn sight cheaper!

Wow, the tutor is an idiot. You've paid good money to actually hinder your child's education by denying him a proper mock exam. It's pretty basic knowledge that you save the most recent papers for mocks and none of the usual revision websites will provide them to stop kids accidentally using them. So if the tutor has access to them, they must be a current teacher, which is a bit mind-boggling to be honest.

Your DS didn't knowingly cheat so certainly the teacher should back off. Harsh words and blame should lie soley with the tutor, who needs to know what a stupid thing they've done.
I do feel sympathy for the class teacher, something that should have been very useful - setting and marking an unseen mock - has been turned into a complete waste of their time, and they now don't have info about your ds's progress or likely grade, making their job much harder.

I teach although I'm in Scotland. We always use past papers for practice to let the kids see they way the exam can be worded etc. in terms of mock exams, they're not valid if they are something which has already been in the public domain. Maybe this teacher shouldn't have been so lazy as to just use last years exam paper! I would be wanting an apology for your son though. He didn't cheat, his hard work - with or without a tutor- isn't being acknowledged. I don't really know what you can do about this though. I don't think speaking to the head would be particularly useful, maybe the head of department?

Most schools use last year's papers, Littlemiss. They are not in the public domain as such, they are restricted access on exam websites.

If you don't use real papers as a mock, then what on earth can you use that has been nationally benchmarked to give appropriate grade boundaries? A teacher can't simply knock up a mock exam themselves and expect it to give them anything like reliable results.

Even exam boards can't even set exams that give reliable results. They have to set their grade boundaries after the exams have been sat and they know how the kids have done.

So accusing the teacher of laziness is just bollocks.

Not here they don't. You can take questions from older papers but they have to be more than 5 years ago and adapt them. As I said different system, but saying I'm talking bollocks is a bit harsh!

Sqa put their papers and marking schemes on their websites a few months after the exam.

How can it be a valid paper for anyone resitting the exam?

Littlemiss is correct, here in Scotland the 2014 exam paper and marking instructions are freely available for download from the SQA website, not the secure site. Our teenagers have been encouraged to practice on as many past papers as possible. (From all years not just 2014)

Did your tutor know which exam boards you were using though? We sat a variety at our school for different subjects, so no guarrantee that the last year's would be the mock papers.

He clearly didn't cheat. The teacher may be a physicist rather than a language teacher, but that's not the definition of cheating. He needs to do another mock, and that's unfortunate, but it wasn't cheating and that word really shouldn't be used that lightly.

Sounds to me like the teacher has a massive problem with tutoring and sees the whole concept as cheating.

On the plus side, your son got a DS, so the information gleaned through going over the paper with the tutor has gone in!

The tutor really ought to know the exam board!

But saying that the teacher is using the last exam paper because they are lazy is bollocks. They are using it because it's a real exam paper with proper grade boundaries, and in England, if not in Scotland, they are not published to the public by the exam board.

Cobbling together an exam out of past paper questions isn't going to give you a great paper. Certainly in maths they have to have an certain percentage of each type of strand of question, a certain amount at each grade. No teacher has the time and expertise to do that sort of breakdown accurately, compared to a team of examiners who can then use a national cohort to sit the exam and set grade boundaries.

If you look at sample assessment materials put out by exam boards, or even PIXL mock papers, they are usually pretty shit compared to live exams.

I teach, not in the UK though, I have to write mock papers. I will use questions from past papers over the last few years. I will change numbers in some questions as well. After the exam we look at the papers and then decide on grades using the descriptors of each grade given by the exam board.

OP. I think that you need to be very careful if you are going to the head (I don't know your policies but) it is heavily frowned upon to go straight to a colleague and complain without going through the proper appointment making channels.

Other than that I agree that your tutor hasn't done your son any favours.

There are two separate issues here.
The first is that the teacher is completely out of order in saying you child is cheating. He did not cheat, he unfortunately had been given access to the mock paper and therefore the result is likely to be inflated in real terms. I would personally approach the head teacher but solely in trying to ensure that the "cheating" allegation does not achieve any further credence than it already has. You can bet your last pound that the teacher has mentioned this in the staff room or to other colleagues and any suggestion to others of your son cheating is totally unacceptable.
The second issue is what you do about the tutor. They have clearly not done your son any favour by how they have approached the individual tuition. I believe you need to tell them what a difficult position they have placed your son in and ask them why they thought it was appropriate to use last year's paper which was so likely to be used by the school for the mock exam. Maybe they do not realise the potential damage they are doing or maybe they do not care as long as the student appears to be doing well in the subject. Only you can decide what the right action is when you hear what the tutor has to say but I would wonder whether continuing the tutoring was appropriate.

It is def not cheating and, to behonest, it is not a big deal. There is only one grade that counts and that is in June. I guess he probably knows if he is an A* student and what he needs to work on.

I guess the only issue is whether he wants to read the subject at advanced level and is depending on his mock grade to do so. If that is the case, he should not complain if his mock is disregarded.

Not cheating but, if I were you, I would have another stronger word with the teacher before taking it further.

Wow. Well, I have learnt lots of new things (no longer in uk but used to teach there).
Had no idea past papers were password protected.
If tutoring I would have done past papers
Your son has not cheated, that's an appalling thing to say.
I would be expecting an apology not doing the apologising.
Worst case but I am out of touch obv is that your son's mock grade is reported and the teacher is meant to achieve that or he'll have to explain the neg residual. But...we were always able to set our expected grades on what we realistically thought not just on teacher assessments. Plus even if he has done the paper twice the recall to get the top grade is excellent so he obv has potential and/or the tutor did a good job of getting the content to stick.
So if it's such a biggie the teacher should be able to find a past paper your son has not done unless syllabus changes make that impossible...just find out how far back the tutor has gone.
Plus most teachers know what their students can do by this point surely? I know I could.
If he is apoplectic because your son is usually C and the A star makes him look bad then he needs to get a grip.
As for gaps in knowledge I would have thought he has already planned much of what is being done between now and Easter and will be going over what the majority buggered up in the exam rather than 32 one on ones but maybe I am lazy or naive. I wouldn't have had time as was always prepping orals til the last minute.
Hope your son does well just to spite your colleague who is making a mountain out of a molehill.
I have only been in a similar position once with a piece of coursework and I never used the word cheat...I asked whether the student had a tutor....as the use of the subjunctive was a huge giveaway. Turns out it was a helpful penpal.
As I had to sign was student's own work the piece was redone after a word with HOD and mum who was fine about it.
This teacher has been an arse quite frankly. I should know, I have worked with a few.