Discussing Cheating in Exams: An International Perspective

[kbaumen]

First of all, I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum, but I just want to raise a discussion.

I study in Latvia and this is my last year at high school. On 5th of June we had an exam in mathematics (it's an exam that every high school finisher in Latvia must take, that's roughly 25 000 students (we're a small country)). I thought it was easy, some of my friends thought it was quite difficult. Anyway, later, in the evening news I heard the the exam had been available on the Internet in the previous night. Many kids had downloaded it and cheated. This makes a problem, because the grading scale is created depending on how the exam is written in the whole country. Hence, no matter how difficult or easy the exam is, the number of A levels won't change much from year to year. Now, if some kids cheat, they decrease the possibility of someone getting an A level without cheating. Now everyone is ranting that the exam should be redone, these results should be canceled.

I was curious, does it happen in other countries as well? Can anyone give some similar experience or talk about how cheating is prevented in their country?

P.S. I didn't cheat, I like math. Although I need an A, it's cvery important for my university application.

 

[getitright]

Our exams here in the U.S.A. and more specifically here in Texas are protected behind a firewall. So far as anyone knows this has not been breached and has internal software to automatically switch versions of the test if a breach is detected.

Best of luck to you in your pursuit for higher learning.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein

 

[kbaumen]

In our country digital protection isn't the problem. The problem is corruption. People working in the ISEC (that's an institution which creates all the exams, dictates the primary and secondary school syllabus etc) simply want to earn some money and sell the exams. Of course not so openly as in a market, but such cases do exist. This year the exam was in a scanned version uploaded on a website and some of the exam was already done there. Funny though, the test part that was done, was mostly wrong, even though the questions were fairly easy.

Btw, thank you for the wish about higher learning.

 

[Razzor7]

I can offer a related story. My friend payed to retake his AS level Biology exam, and his score was canceled when it was revealed that the test had been available online for around a day before the exam officially began. He was able to retake it again within a few weeks.

 

[kbaumen]

I can offer a related story. My friend payed to retake his AS level Biology exam, and his score was canceled when it was revealed that the test had been available online for around a day before the exam officially began. He was able to retake it again within a few weeks.

I hope my score won't be canceled, because I need the results ASAP, to send them to the University. If the results are canceled and the exam is to be redone, it will take an awful lot of time to prepare everything and to correct all the papers. However, I think it is unlikely to happen.

 

[maze]

The testmakers should "leak" a bunch of fake tests

 

[daveyinaz]

The testmakers should "leak" a bunch of fake tests

lol

 

[antiņš]

Relax, new math exam is too expensive for Latvia.

 

[ronaldor9]

LOL that would be awsome, good as a test of honesty. I love that idea!