The number of teachers caught cheating to get better exam results for their pupils has increased fourfold over the last four years, a report has found.
Last year, 388 penalties were given to teachers for the offence, compared to 97 in 2013.
Research from the Royal Society of Arts, first reported in The Times, concluded a sharper focus on tests, league tables and inspections forced teachers to "choose between helping their pupils and helping themselves."
“Considering how hard some forms of cheating are to detect, this is likely to understate the true scale of the problem,” the report added.
Offences included giving pupils "inappropriate assistance" on coursework, whispering advice during exams or allowing pupils to continue working past official deadlines.
The study also found schools were increasingly excluding under-performing students before they took their GCSEs in order for teachers to score better results on average, with the number of cases of such "off-rolling" rising by 40 per cent in the last three years.
Others had encouraged students with English as a second language to pick up a GCSE subject in the mother tongue, even though the exams were never intended for native speakers.
“Education has become like a game of ‘whack-a-mole’, with schools finding ever more inventive ways to play the system and ministers struggle to keep up with them,” Julian Astle, the report's author, told The Times.
“Our school system, with its focus on tests, targets, league tables and inspections, is full of unintended consequences and perverse incentives. It has become such a game that it is forcing teachers and school leaders to choose between helping pupils and helping themselves.”
It comes after Ofqual, England's exams watchdog, said it was reviewing rules allowing teachers to set exam papers their pupils will sit.
A cheating scandal involving several top public schools was revealed after questions were found to have been leaked by teachers who were also serving as examiners.
