Commenting on the report of the commission into examination
malpractice, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association
of School and College Leaders, said:
“Exam cheating and other types of malpractice are rare, and the
vast majority of students, teachers, exams officers and school
leaders behave with the greatest integrity. But the small number
of reported incidents, particularly high-profile breaches, can
have a disproportionate impact on the public’s perception of the
exam system. We therefore welcome the painstaking and thorough
work of the commission in developing an excellent set of
recommendations to further improve safeguards.
“In the longer term, we must rethink an exam system which is
rooted in a pen-and-paper era that feels increasingly like an
anachronism and is threatened by technologies which facilitate
cheating. We need to put less emphasis on the annual ritual of
subjecting young people to trial by exam and use a more nuanced
range of assessment methods to support progression to future
courses and careers. And we could better utilise technology to
provide secure online assessment rather than scrambling to stay
one step ahead of the cheaters. We need a
21st century approach to assessment which is
better for students, provides a more complete picture to
employers, and which has the additional benefit of being less
cheatable.”
