Important information for students taking examinations

Malpractice is the official word for cheating in examinations, coursework or other assessments.

These things are forms of malpractice and will be taken very seriously:

• Collusion – when the work of several people is submitted as though it were one student’s work. For example if a group of students work together on a project which is then submitted as one student’s coursework, or if a tutor or relative helps a student to write an essay which is then submitted as the student’s own work.
• Copying or plagiarism (including the use of ICT to aid copying).Plagiarism is when students copy the work of other people and pass it off as their own. There is a particular danger of doing this through copying and pasting text into an essay and not clearly stating where the text came from and who wrote it. Always be careful to say whose work you are quoting, and don’t pretend it is yours when it is not. When you use other people’s words, always put them inside “quotes”.
• Bringing a mobile phone or other device into an examination. Whether or not the phone is used for cheating, having a phone in your pocket or bag during an examination is considered malpractice and will result in serious consequences. A student at this school once had a GCSE withdrawn because they had a mobile phone with them in the examination room.
• Fabrication of results or evidence. You might think that there is no way anyone could know that you made up the results of your survey or experiment, but in fact it is often quite obvious. If you are not using genuine results that you have collected you must say so, and if you are using someone else’s data you must make it clear where that data came from and who collected it.
• Impersonation by pretending to be someone else in order to produce the work for another or arranging for another person to take your place in an assessment/examination/test.

This is not an exhaustive list: any activity that gives you an unfair advantage over other students can be considered serious enough for us to report it to the examining body. The consequences of malpractice can range from a particular piece of work not being accepted by a teacher, to having all your qualifications cancelled by the examining body. The school is obliged to report serious incidents of malpractice and, in extreme cases, could permanently exclude students who cheat.