Phone-blocker call to cut off exam cheats

Teachers are calling for mobile phone blocking technology to be used in exam halls to halt sneaky test cheating.

Exasperated school staff believe the only way of stopping exam cheats who use their phones to look for answers is to roll out the use of signal blockers identical to those used in Scots prisons.

New figures obtained by The Sunday Post show 249 pupils were caught cheating in their exams last year. And with more than 146,000 pupils waiting for their results this week, calls for a crackdown on the cheats is escalating.

Last night, Alan McKenzie of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association said authorities should consider using technology to curb the cheats.

He said: “The use of mobile phones has had a huge impact on exam cheating. Things like the phone-blocking technology used in prisons should be looked at. I’m not suggesting that kids should be stopped from carrying phones on them while in school. That would be impossible to police. But during the exams we should be investigating new technology cheats certainly do.”

Phone-blocking technology is currently being piloted in two Scottish prisons, Glenochil, in Clackmannanshire, and Shotts, in Lanarkshire. It was brought in after jail bosses found 1,988 contraband mobile phones in Scottish prisons in just three years. Inmates were said to be using the phones to run criminal activities, intimidate witnesses and even access Facebook.

Privately, teachers quizzed by The Sunday Post supported the idea. One Glasgow teacher who recently invigilated exams at her fee-paying school said: “Mobile phone cheating is rife. I once caught a girl who’d taped a phone to her arm underneath a transparent, thin wool jumper and via a small hole had figured out a way of tapping her screen and reading the answers through her jumper.”

But Scottish Tory Education spokeswoman Mary Scanlon MSP believes phone blocking in exams would be a step too far.

She said: “We are hugely supportive of phone signal blocking for prisons, and it’s something we campaigned on for years. But we believe extending it to the exam room would be excessive and impractical. A system where children were forced to hand over their phones upon entry into the examination room would be far more sensible.”

The use of mobile phones is believed to be linked to over a quarter of the cases, our probe found. The figures relate to exams taken in May and June 2013 as statistics relating to this summer’s exam diet won’t be available until later this year.

School Leaders Scotland the headteachers’ union is keen for cheating controls, but Ken Cunningham, the body’s spokesman, said: “Theoretically it sounds good but I fear it might be impractical.”

A spokesperson for the SQA said: “We continue to work in partnership with schools, colleges and teachers, to ensure a consistent approach to malpractice is applied everywhere and every time.

“The number of cases of cheating by candidates sitting SQA national examinations is extremely low. In 2013, penalties were applied to 249 candidates 0.03% of the total number of entries.’’

Similar recent figures revealed across Scotland 353 students have been caught cheating in university exams since 2011.

Again subterfuge involving the use of phones or tablets was discovered in a majority of the cases.

Results by post, text and email

The start of August used to give the humble postman life-changing powers. His presence sent shivers down the spines of teenagers as it meant only one thing they were about to find out how they fared in the school exams. It could make or break the whole summer and alter lives.

Those days, however, are being brought to an end by the digital revolution. All pupils this year will still receive their grades by post. But 25% will also find out how they have fared from electronic notification. That’s 37,237 children who have signed up to get their life-changing results either by email or text.

The electronic result alerts will be sent in the early hours of Tuesday morning with the posted results arriving later the same day.