The Ethics of Cheating on GCSE Controlled Assessments
Tom Preston and Meira Levinson
A Justice in Schools Normative Case Study
www.justiceinschools.org
It seems reasonable to assume that most teachers don’t join the profession with the intention of
cheating. Yet according to a 2012 poll conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, “35%
of teachers said the pressure to improve their students’ grades was now so strong they could be
persuaded to cheat.”1 A report by the National Union of Teachers found that “pressure from
inspection and league tables placed a perverse incentive on schools to ‘bend the rules’” when it
came to student assessments.2
This is not a new problem. The Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment claims
that “cheating in coursework has been an ongoing concern,” since the introduction of the General
Certificate of Education (GCSE) in 1986.3 Even the Royal Family has failed to escape the cheating
scandal: in 2005, Prince Harry was accused of receiving “inappropriate help” from teachers whilst
studying for his A Levels at Eton College.4
The cheating epidemic has sparked a number of policy changes at the national level. In 2008,
in response to concerns about cheating and the “pressures of league tables and performance pay,”
the QCA advised examination boards to change regulations in order to abolish unsupervised
coursework.5 Instead, controlled assessments were introduced, with students required to complete
work under supervision and in silence, within strict time limits, and with no help or guidance from
their teachers or peers.6 The aims of this new approach were to “address issues of authenticity,
plagiarism and comparability of process.”7 However, a 2013 report by the Office of Qualifications
and Examinations Regulation found that controlled assessment rules were often flouted:
Respondents questioned the integrity of the process and expressed concerns about
teachers, departments and/or schools or colleges breaking the rules around the
conduct of controlled assessment, as a result of the pressure schools are under to
improve their GCSE results and because of the lack of policing of the rules. Several
respondents gave examples of schools or colleges bending the rules, for example by
allowing redrafting, falsifying data, giving more individual feedback than is allowed,
and/or having mock assessments that are very close to the task.8
Despite decades of reform, successive UK governments have as yet failed to restore faith in the
GCSE, and more generally, cheating remains a key issue for schools, policymakers and the public.9
Why do an apparently significant percentage of teachers respond to the pressure to raise
students’ grades by resorting to cheating? One common answer is that teachers lack strong moral
fibre. At best, weakness of will leads them to give in to pressure to raise their school’s status on
league tables and get higher Ofsted inspection grades; at worst, on this account, teachers
unscrupulously exploit systemic incentives to cheat for their own gain, attaining higher
performance-related-pay and other benefits.10 Commentators thus talk about the “honourable
majority” of teachers who are wronged by a system in which others fail to “play by the rules”; they
correlatively condemn teachers who “trick and scheme” for their own or their school’s advantage.
These same commentators are sympathetic to the “unsustainable pressure” that many teachers are
under, noting that for academy schools in particular, “Success equals national adulation. Failure
inevitably leads to a disproportionate and ghoulish interest in their demise.” But the need to sustain
their careers and “pay the mortgage” is no excuse for “open malpractice.”11
Left out of this discourse, however, is a third possibility: that in addition to those teachers
who cheat out of weakness, or for purely self-serving reasons, are teachers who choose to cheat for
purely ethical reasons. In particular, these teachers decide that cheating is the most moral choice
they can make—in the face, admittedly, of a range of poor options—because it is the most effective
way that they can battle against a corrupt and unjust system and ensure that students from the
most disadvantaged backgrounds have decent opportunities in life.
Teachers who cheat for ethical reasons do not reach this decision easily, and they often
revisit their choice to cheat, including what counts as “legitimate” versus “illegitimate” forms of
cheating while overseeing their students’ GCSE controlled assessments. Lauren McLeish, an English
teacher at Morton Greene Community School,12 explained in an interview how she wrestled with,
and eventually justified, the ethics of cheating on the GCSEs.
She began by explaining that she found the GCSEs to be inherently compromised because
they weren’t for the benefits of students. “The examination system has become something other
than understanding the achievements and abilities of our students.” Rather, she explained, its
primary function is to “catch out” teachers on the “assumption that we’re all doing a bad job.” This
is insulting and disrespectful to teachers. It also means that students are forced to spend months
revising for and taking exams that are designed simply to identify bad teachers. “Because that
culture exists,” she commented, “in my eyes, personally, the credibility of the whole system is
damaged.”
This damaged credibility then leads Lauren to justify breaking the rules when individual
students’ interests are directly at stake, and especially when she feels she’s honoring the original
spirit of the GCSE assessment (to learn about what students know and are able to do) rather than its
letter (to test all students under identical conditions):
I’m thinking of a particular student who I know finds it difficult to write but actually
what he says orally is great, and sometimes in the rules he wouldn’t be allowed to
have any assistance whatsoever once that controlled assessment had started, for
example, but I know that his ideas are in there, and I know that he can explore them
just as well as everybody else, but I know he needs to do that in a different way. So
if it means that I have to have a conversation with him about what he’s writing and
help him to tease out those ideas, not by giving him the answers but by asking the
right questions, then I would say morally that’s permissible because that student has
as much ability as the other students in the class to do what I’m asking him to do. In
the eyes of the government, they probably would say that he doesn’t deserve to
achieve the same grade as others in the class, and I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t
think a one-size-fits-all examination system is right.
Here, Lauren again criticises the larger examination system, arguing that its rigidity unfairly
impedes some students and rewards others, depending on their learning styles and the conditions in
which they best express their ideas. Because she sees the rules as unjust, Lauren feels compelled to
subvert them in whatever way she can so that her students can flourish. In this respect, she is acting
in accord with Alfie Kohn’s recommendation, “if cheating is defined as a violation of the rules, then
we’d want to know whether those rules are reasonable, who devised them, and who stands to
benefit by them.”13 Teachers like Lauren argue that because the rules themselves are unfair,
adhering to them is more unfair than breaking them. If sticking to the rules means complying with
jarringly rigid treatment of students that fails to fully account for diversity and difference; if it means
inhibiting students’ learning; if it means damaging students’ life chances and future wellbeing —
then it seems there are at least some legitimate moral grounds for breaking those rules.
Teachers worry about damaging students’ life chances precisely because five or more GCSEs
at grade C or above, including English and Mathematics, are the minimum qualification to advance
to further and higher education, and are treated as “the minimum threshold for employability.”14
People with five or more GCSEs at grade C or above earn on average over £100,000 more during
their working lives than those who leave school without any GCSEs at C or above.15 If these
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disparities in life outcomes were evenly distributed among the student population, teachers might
feel sorry for their students who didn’t attain sufficient C grades, but not feel that their failure was
an injustice. Students’ success on the GCSEs strongly tracks their social class, however; students who
are eligible for free school meals, for example, are at least three times likelier not to obtain five or
more GCSEs at any grade than those who are not eligible.16 Especially when teachers believe that
their students’ potential failures are due to arbitrary or invalid criteria such as shifting “grade
boundaries” (so that a 55 might earn a D, but a 56 a C) or refusal to allow use of an aid such as a
dictionary, they may well decide that their duties to help their disadvantaged students succeed in
life outweigh their obligations to adhere to arbitrary marking or administration standards.
This is not to say that teachers’ ethical justification of cheating is necessarily convincing.
When teachers decide to break the rules, even for the kinds of moral reasons Lauren puts forward
above, their actions may bring about a number of negative externalities that are themselves morally
relevant. After all, cheating models dishonest behaviour, which may well have a negative impact on
children’s individual moral development17 and their collective commitments to respect and follow
the rule of law.
Cheating also gives some students an unfair advantage over others. GCSEs in part benefit
students by enhancing their skills and knowledge in an absolute sense. But GCSEs also offer
positional advantage, insofar as GCSE grades are used to sort applicants for competitive positions
within the labor market and further education opportunities. Hence teachers who give their
students extra time or help on controlled assessments not only enhance their own students’
opportunities, but unfairly reduce the opportunities of those students in classrooms where teachers
did not cheat. Finally, cheating legitimises the examination system, by making it appear that
students truly are learning more and doing better, and hence that the GCSE Controlled Assessment
policies are working as planned. Policy makers cannot tell the difference between a teacher who
secretly cheats and a teacher who follows the rules. If teachers cheat the system then they do
nothing to change it, and may in face reinforce it.
Teachers like Lauren recognize these harms from cheating. They do not embrace their
identities as cheaters. Notably, in a massive US teacher cheating scandal in Atlanta, many teachers
who cheated apologised profusely to their students, their families, and their colleagues. Some
fought against the charges that they cheated. But none of the nearly-200 teachers and head
teachers involved publicly defended their choice to cheat. Nonetheless, there is good evidence that
many teachers continue to cheat, and that they do so not because of weakness of will nor out of
self-interest, but rather for what they view as the best of reasons: their ethical obligations toward
their students.
Are Lauren and her colleagues fundamentally misguided or even corrupt? Or are they justified in
cheating in particular ways, under particular circumstances, with particular students, and/or in the
context of particular assessment schemes? If not, then what actions are open to them for fulfilling
their ethical obligations as teachers? If so, then how can the negative moral and practical
consequences of teacher cheating be addressed?
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References
1
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/apr/02/teachers-under-pressure-to-cheat
http://www.teachers.org.uk/files/survey-report.doc.
3
http://oucea.education.ox.ac.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WCQ-report-final.pdf
4
http://news.sky.com/story/346599/eton-head-shocked-over-prince-tapes
5
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2294596
6
Council for Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment (2009) Controlled Assessment: Teacher Guidance.
7
ibid.
8
http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2013-06-11-review-of-controlled-assessment-in-GCSEs.pdf
9
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/07/gcse-controlled-assessments-hindering-learning;
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/sep/09/schools-gcse-exam-cheats;
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/of-course-some-teachers-will-bump-up-marks-courseworkputs-teachers-in-a-loselose-position-8849323.html
10
http://www.poverty.org.uk/26/index.shtml?2
11
All quotations in this paragraph taken from http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/sep/09/schoolsgcse-exam-cheats and http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/aug/22/gcse-schools-bending-rules.
12
To protect privacy, all names provided are pseudonyms.
13
Kohn. A (2007) Who’s Cheating Whom?, Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 89, no.2, pg. 88-97.
14
http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/pdfs/2007-green-raising-expectations-post16.pdf
15
ibid.
16
http://www.poverty.org.uk/26/index.shtml?2
17
Weissbourd, R. (2010) The Parents We Mean To Be, First Mariner, Boston, MA.
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