The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has taken no action against students who shared details of exam papers online last year, despite saying that the posts had the potential to “impact on the integrity of certification for all candidates nationally”.
A Tes Scotland freedom of information request has also revealed that the SQA does not know how many schools took action against students for cheating in the 2021 assessments, or the penalties that were issued.
These penalties could, in theory, be as severe as a candidate being withdrawn from the qualification or having marks deducted.
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In 2021 the exams were cancelled but staff and pupils spoke out saying that “exams in all but name” were taking place as a result of SQA rules on the evidence that could be used to support teacher estimates.
SQA contacted schools over the sharing of exam papers online
The SQA also made the unused 2020 exam papers available to schools for assessment via its secure website.
However, with students in different schools sitting the papers at different times, Tes Scotland revealed in May that entire papers were being posted on social networking sites like TikTok and Discord in what one student referred to as “the SQA black market”.
In response, the SQA told schools and further education colleges that “appropriate penalties should be applied” if cases of “candidate malpractice” were identified.
The SQA also said it had contacted centres “to ensure that posts are removed as soon as possible”
The Tes Scotland FOI shows that “fewer than five” schools were contacted by the SQA about the sharing of information online by their students.
In an email to the schools - which they were told to respond to within one working day - the SQA tells them to “take immediate action to notify the candidate and ensure that this information is removed as soon as possible”.
It adds: “SQA will not take any action against your candidate. However, we strongly recommend that you instigate your centre’s internal malpractice procedures to investigate this incident, given the seriousness of this concern and its potential impact on the integrity of certification for all candidates nationally.”
However, while in a typical year the SQA publishes data on so-called candidate malpractice - which includes copying, plagiarism and breaching of assessment conditions - it has said that this year “all candidate malpractice was devolved to centres” and that it does not collect information relating to the number of candidates accused of malpractice, or the number of penalties issued by schools.
An SQA spokesperson said: “SQA requires centres to have policies and procedures to investigate concerns of possible candidate malpractice in internal assessments, and to manage this appropriately within the centre. This requirement applied to the unique circumstances of assessment in 2020-21. Schools and colleges were provided with guidance on the security and confidentiality of assessment materials and had their own malpractice procedures to apply.
“Suspected malpractice must be investigated within the centre in line with SQA’s published guidance and it is for centres to take appropriate action when a case of suspected candidate malpractice is upheld. SQA does not require centres to inform SQA of candidate malpractice, unless the malpractice is established after the submission of results to SQA or in some other very specific circumstances.”
The Tes Scotland FOI also reveals that candidate malpractice figures for the 2019 exam diet were published by the SQA at the end of September, after being delayed by the pandemic.
They show that in 2019 candidate malpractice hit its lowest level since at least 2015, with 150 penalties issued to candidates (0.03 per cent of the total number of entries). That is down from 204 penalties the previous year, and 163 penalties in 2015.
The most common type of malpractice every year from 2015 to 2019 was plagiarism, with 61 penalties issued for this in 2019.
In 2019 the most common penalty for malpractice was cancellation of the award, which happened in 93 of the 150 cases.
No candidate malpractice data was published for the 2020 exam diet, given that national SQA exams were cancelled and schools were closed from March as a result the pandemic.
