Digital technology and dishonesty in exams and assessment QCA/JISC Lecture Event, Monday Dec 4th.

The core of this event was a presentation by Jean Underwood from Nottingham Trent University of the report QCA commissioned from her. I thought it was a tremendously lucid, frank account. What most struck me was the absolute chasm that exists between QCA and those “innovative” voices out there who are urging, for example: more peer assessment in personalised learning or criticising exams for not actually assessing what the pupils can do with new technology. To be able to assess what a child/peer knows or can do, you have to logically either know it yourself or be able to do it yourself.

Delegates at this event were in absolute agreement that the exams aspect of this issue is tip of the iceberg stuff, and that a child who cheats in a formal exam has more than likely been cheating routinely, so it was pitched as the launch of a national debate. My sole contribution to that debate was a plea for some joined up thinking from government on this. At an event I attended only weeks ago, when asked if the department was doing anything about plagiarism the key speaker not only said, “No,” but proceeded to say, “I did it at university, didn’t you? and go on to calmly detail with some degree of pride, his own skill at plagiarising as an undergraduate. Jean Underwood’s response was a tersely honest, “Can we sack him?”