Cheating probe after chat room discussion on ‘notes’

EXAM students could face investigation or have their scripts checked based on online reports of cheating as authorities seek to stamp out unfair practices.

The State Examinations Commission (SEC) has confirmed it is investigating claims of cheating at one school after discussions on the boards.ie website at the weekend. One student had started a discussion thread on Saturday saying that other Leaving Certificate candidates were retrieving notes hidden in their socks and pants in the toilets, and that others were reading saved notes from mobile phones in the exam hall. “We are commencing an investigation into an allegation made by a student in relation to cheating at an exam centre,” a SEC spokesperson said.

But she stressed that this is no different to probes it conducts every year if cheating allegations are made by other students, by school staff if they discover materials on the premises, or by parents of students who tell them classmates have been cheating. Every year, dozens of students do not get a result in one or more subjects if investigations conclude they had broken exam rules. Many cases arise from reports of suspicious activity by SEC personnel supervising exams and by exam markers who notice similar work by students at the same exam centre or who find notes in answer booklets that appear to have been brought into the exam in breach of the rules.

Last year, 83 results were withheld from Leaving Cert students following such investigations and the results of individual subjects for nine Junior Cert students were withheld.

The discussion thread on boards.ie prompted varying responses to the claims of the student who raised the issue, as she had asked whether she should inform the superintendent at her school or whether she should notify the SEC.

The commission has been monitoring this and other websites, including Twitter.com, where students have been referring to the progress of exams in their school. Last Thursday, a superintendent was fired from his work at a special centre for an individual student at a Dublin school after it was brought to the SEC’s attention that he had been posting messages to Twitter from his mobile phone when he should have been overseeing an exam.

It is against rules for superintendents to use mobile phones while on duty, but those appointed to about 7,000 special exam centres are chosen by schools rather than by the SEC, which appoints the 4,700 people overseeing exam centres for larger groups of students.