Coursework corruption

I have touched on this subject already but I want to talk in more detail about coursework cheating at GCSE and A Level.

The way coursework is carried out in most schools allows students ample opportunity to cheat and the unspoken truth is that teachers, parents and tutors turn a blind eye to it and, in some cases, even collude in helping.  

Coursework accounts for somewhere between 20-25 per cent of a student's final grade. In English it will usually involve writing two essays of 2000 words or a piece of creative fiction and commentary in response to a piece of literature. In History it might involve a response to four  different sources about a particular event or person or a written investigation into a historical problem. 

Now the form and level of cheating varies hugely. The students are allowed some general feedback on their first drafts. However, some teachers go much further than this. For example, I was recently working with a student on an essay about Forster's A Passage to India and Where Angels Fear to Tread and I saw the teacher's notes. There were about 6-7 comments per paragraph and in many cases the teacher had offered a rewriting of a sentence. He referred to Italy being a place of 'passionate possibilities' in relation to Edwardian England and yet the student had not made this connection at this point in the essay, referring instead to a character's lust for Italy being attached to a lost classical world. Good point but a different point. OCR states in its marking guidelines that the teacher must 'be able to verify that the work submitted for assessment is the candidate's own work.' I am afraid that some teachers overstep the line and help write a student's essay. I would say that 10-15 per cent of this essay was nothing to do with the student and was instead the teacher's pen at work. 

Of course, many teachers do not collude and maintain good practice but they should not be assessing coursework. They cannot be impartial when they need to achieve certain exam results. Once more, league tables and the whole assessment system skews the work of the teacher. 

Controlled assessment is also a joke. I know lots of students who sneak work into the classrooms, use their phones and talk to one another about how to answer the question. The teachers again turn a blind eye because it is not in their interests to accuse their students of cheating. 

The students who have pushy parents who pay private tutors to write their coursework or write it themselves also contribute massively to the problem. I try to give structural advice or what might be called a writing frame when students work on an essay but when you are there with them for three or four hours at a time the temptation to help them rework sections is high, but I have learned to take a step back. Ultimately you are not there to think for them and you are often long gone when results come out. 

This leads me to the problem of the Internet as a source of chat rooms, essay writing forums and fraudsters willing to make a buck from writing coursework. A little Google search provides several options for students looking for people to write essays for them or download articles and copy or barely reword sections. 

Mori carried out a survey into teacher's attitudes towards coursework back in 2006 and, unsurprisingly, they came out in favour of coursework for the students. Although only 29 per cent said they thought it helped the students build skills for the subject, which is surely one of the main reasons for studying, along with 25 per cent saying that it encouraged independent learning. What was even more discouraging was that only 10 per cent of teachers polled agreed that it motivated students. With such figures it doesn't really add up why teachers think coursework is useful. If it is to be representative of a student's capabilities and a way to develop skills it needs to be part of a more sustained process of assessment. The question is how to build honesty into the system and I think this needs to be tackled in several ways. No coursework outside the classroom. No league tables as it promotes dishonesty. And perhaps students should be marked by candidate numbers and by another teacher in the school or in a sister school so the work is marked with less risk of prejudice. 

The problem with not tackling this is that we are creating generations of students who do not understand how to think independently and as a result they cannot truly articulate their own views. 

The Hunger Games world of coursework and EBacc

Fraud in the educational world is nothing new. Many of you will probably remember the story of Dave Tomar, who admitted that he had written scores of essays and dissertations for students who were either too lazy or lacked the language skills to write their own work. What is shocking is that he managed to produce work not only at undergraduate level but for masters and doctoral students also.

For me as a tutor, however, being asked to help students with their coursework has been an almost annual fixture. And it’s usually the parents who ask. I would say at least half of those I have tutored have tried to get me to write a portion or most of their coursework. In one case a mother sat me down over a cup of tea and asked me to write a ‘crib’ draft for her son to use when writing his coursework and then offered me nearly a thousand pounds to spend a couple of days ‘editing’ her son’s ‘finished’ piece. She even had the cheek to talk about the Renaissance artists and how younger artists would finish off the work started by figures such as Michelangelo. Talking about any Renaissance artist was a bit rich in relation to this student, whose defining characteristic was that he went to school perhaps three times a week and smoked dope. Of course I refused but I would be fibbing if I didn’t say that I wasn’t tempted. The thing is, that I can make more money, if I so desire, simply sitting next to the lazy student while they take ten minutes over every sentence, giving them advice, such as: why not open this book and read this chapter your History teacher has asked you to read? I am employed too often as a babysitter rather than a teacher. The laziness and inability to concentrate is the mark of half of those who are privately tutored. The other half are savvy enough to know they can use it to get a real edge over their peers in The Great British University Competition.

The problem is that when education becomes reduced to nothing more than the transaction of money for knowledge, students and parents want a return from tuition in quantifiable terms. Some parents wholeheartedly believe they are paying you for the guarantee an A* grade. The tutoring agencies push this transactional nature also. And the schools and exam boards are also a part of the problem. The obsession with exam results occludes all other factors in determining the type of education offered to students.

Coursework, in particular, becomes the great divider between the private school and poorer state school student, who cannot afford to hire a tutor at 40-50 pounds an hour. The kid with the private tutor can have his work edited again and again with the assistance of a tutor. I admit that until very recently I was very much a part of this problem. I was a state school kid who worked his butt off and managed to get a good university place and then became part of a system that benefited a very small minority.

The mistake is to think that every child is capable of learning in the same fashion and judged by the same system. This is the trouble with Gove's current idiotic schemes. He fails to understand that not all kids work in the same way or are interested in the same things, not to mention that some kids will now feel excluded because many subjects such as drama, art and music will be devalued by the EBacc. This will lead to greater class distinctions in the arts. Only those who attend schools like Eton and Harrow with their massive budgets for theatre and music will be encouraged to think about a career in the arts industry. There will be many more Cumberbatchs and Redmaynes in ten years from now and many working class kids will have little chance to engage with culture in a meaningful and personal way. I will talk more about this in a later blog. It’s just a shame that the cultural landscape of our future will be dominated by such a small section of society.

As far as coursework is concerned, there is also a question of entitlement. Private school parents and kids tend to be more willing to fight for extra help and extra time to complete coursework. I have worked with many state school kids and they are often nervous and shy to ask for assistance, as are their parents. They are also less willing to take risks in terms of structuring their essays and with the style of their writing. I find it most effective to spend my lessons teaching the students different ways of thinking about their subject. The work becomes focused on enquiry and invention- the strive for something original. Ultimately, it is about helping a student to develop an academic voice of their own. Giving someone the opportunity to speak for themselves is what education should be for, rather than for simply acquiring knowledge. We are already an information saturated society and the ease with which information can be gathered has only made us lazier about how we research, how we engage with problems and the value we place on facts and figures.

One final thought. This violent competition to score top marks on coursework by any means is also tied up with the skewed value system we still hold in regards to university. We are perhaps beginning to see a healthy disrespect for bankers and those in high paid positions of power but we still see certain occupations as beneath what we would want our kids to do. There are so many choices of career and jobs that are not even discussed by schools when kids are making choices about where to go. I’ve seen too many students from wealthy or privileged backgrounds being forced to go to universities to do second rate degrees when it would have been far better for them to have gone into a profession or trade. Also, universities should be doing far more to contact the rural comprehensives and finding those students who have not considered they might be capable of going to a top university.

Gove is the Game Maker that will see the kids from District 12 pitted against those from District 1 and the EBacc will be as deadly as E-coli.