CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT
Taking control back
One of the major changes
to GCSEs are the new
controlled assessment
procedures. The measures
are aimed at helping schools
to tackle issues of plagiarism
while also safeguarding
the concept of coursework.
We take a look at how the
changes will work
W
hen examiners found large-scale
“blatant plagiarism” of English
GCSE coursework three years ago,
it was a matter of time before the authorities
had to look seriously at the future of the
system.
Students in the same school had copied
whole sections of answers from a website,
using exactly the same vocabulary and
writing styles.
What was even more surprising, their
investigation found, was that their teachers
had either not noticed, or chosen deliberately
to overlook it.
At about the same time, a growing trend
known as “scaffolding” had been identified,
where teachers helped pupils by giving them
structures to write their coursework. This had
led to examiners being unable to distinguish
between the work of different students
because they began with the same sentences
and paragraphs, often running in the same
order.
There was also the difficult issue of
how much help parents were offering their
children at home. Those who did not have
computer-literate parents were most likely to
be disadvantaged.
When the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority (QCA) released its study into
cheating and plagiarism later that same year,
in 2005, it found that about 4,000 students
a year were being caught for breaching the
rules – a nine per cent rise from previous
years.
It blamed the incidents on an increase
in the use of computers and the internet
at home, with more than nine out of 10
teenagers saying they could access websites
from home.
Even more worryingly, however, the
study said that the use of websites offering
custom-made essays and answers “cannot be
controlled”.
One in 20 parents interviewed as part of
the research admitted they had drafted some
of their children’s GCSE coursework.
The QCA concluded that coursework had
8 SecEd
DELIVERING INNOVATION IN QUALIFICATIONS
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