The International Baccalaureate (IB) has announced a raft of measures designed to combat the sharing of exam content across time zones.
The new rules - to be introduced in time for the November 2024 IB exams - follow time zone cheating during the body’s May exam series, when time differences were exploited to share exam questions online.
The IB says it will adjust start times for exams in certain schools to prevent students taking exams in earlier time zones from sharing topics with anyone based in later time zones.
It also says it will introduce a minimum supervision period of two hours for all exams to “help maintain academic integrity”. The IB says this will mean that “if a student has a single exam scheduled for one hour, they must still be supervised for a minimum of two hours”.
Finally, schools will be required to clear the memories of all calculators.
The statement issued by the IB today says: “While the IB encourages the use of technology like graphical display calculators, schools will be required to clear the devices’ memory at the end of each exam. This new practice will allow schools to re-evaluate their internal rules on using calculators in exams.”
‘No evidence of widespread cheating’
Following its May exam series, the IB said there was no evidence of widespread cheating and a very small number of students were involved.
Of particular concern, however, was the Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level exam.
Students had published a document online two or three hours ahead of when students in Western Europe started their exams.
At the time, the IB said time zone cheating was explicitly forbidden and that the students involved risked receiving no marks for their examinations or no grade for the relevant subject.
It also said that students could be banned from resitting any examinations.
Liz Free, director at International School Rheintal in Switzerland and a member of the Tes Global Advisory Board, said the solutions proposed were important to maintain academic integrity - but would have implications for school budgets and processes.
“It is a little frustrating to have to have extra supervision for one-hour examinations, which will have implications for supervision costs, time and space,” she said.
“However, the integrity of the examinations is critical and we support IB’s measures in ensuring that the examination process is valued and trusted.”
For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the Tes Daily newsletter
