Nearly 200 school and college students were caught cheating in exams in Wales last summer and 15 staff and exam centres were penalised for malpractice.
Most student cheating was in GCSE exams and involved using mobile phones, a report from regulator Qualifications Wales shows. Mobile phones are banned during exams.
Other examples were trying to communicate with other candidates during an exam, plagiarism, and bringing in unauthorised material.
Now the Joint Council for Qualifications, the body that represents exam boards, plans to consult on banning all watches from exam rooms too due to the increased popularity of smart watches that connect to the internet.
Any breach of regulations “that might undermine the integrity of an exam” constitutes “malpractice” or cheating.
For those caught cheating in Wales last year the most common penalty was losing marks - 130 students of the 190 caught were stripped of some marks. The report covers GCSEs, A and AS level exams.
Qualifications Wales could not confirm whether anyone had their entire exam voided for cheating.
The majority who received a penalty committed one offence but a small number of students committed two offences and received two penalties.
In total 200 penalties were handed out in summer 2019, down 5.7% compared to 210 penalties issued in 2018.
Mobile phones continued to be the most common reason for a penalty to be issued, accounting for 54% of cases.
“This category continues to grow in prominence over time, up from 45.7% of cases in 2018,” said Qualifications Wales head of research and statistics Tom Anderson.
“Communicating during an examination at 14.1% and disruptive behaviour at 13.6% were the next most common offence categories.”
Cheating is rare though. During the 2019 GCSE , AS and A level exam series in Wales one penalty was issued for every 5,500 entries.
Instances include plagiarism, attempts by students to communicate with each other during an exam, taking unauthorised materials in, and failure by school or college staff to comply with exam board instructions.
Maladministration by school or college staff would include failure to stick to regulations of controlled assessments, course work, exams and non-exam assessments, or malpractice in the way exams/assessments are conducted and/or handling of documents such as exam question papers, candidate scripts and mark sheets, the regulator said.
Five penalties were issued to schools and colleges in Wales in summer 2019, slightly less than the 10 in 2018.
Penalties issued to centres were either written warnings or requirements for the centre to review their procedures and provide a report to the awarding body detailing the improvements set to be implemented.
