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A sign of the times, cheating comes down to glancing at your smartphone during an exam, or copy-pasting whole sections of texts found on the Internet. Attempts to cheat on final exams increased by 10% in 2014, when compared to 2013, according to National Education Ministry statistics.

Plagiarism is increasing at the secondary school level, according to the numbers revealed by the Inter-academic Commission of Ile-de-France. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of cases of plagiarism and copying reported to the disciplinary commissions in Ile-de-France doubled, increasing from 24 to 47. They represented last year 25% of the 188 cases of fraud on exams reported to disciplinary commissions.

It was the Director of the University of Law in Le Havre who drew this violation to the attention of the Public Prosecutor. Cheating on an exam is punished by a maximum sentence of 3 years imprisonment and a fine of 9000 Euros.

The executive Director of the School of Journalism, Sciences Po, is accused of copying/pasting extracts of articles in her chronicles on the Huffington Post, without quoting her sources. The Director of the School of journalism wrote to both students and staff stating that: "the school, that teaches deontology, cannot take lightly such affairs".

The parliament's representative of French citizens living in Northern Europe, pleads for a systematic use of anti-plagiarism software. "It is a question of equal chances", insists the Deputy when addressing the Ministers of National and Higher Education on this subject.

The financial crisis at UVSQ (University of Versailles Saint-Quentin), on the edge of default in payment in late 2013, is "essentially the result of the institution's failure to anticipate the consequences of management decisions".

The Hauts-de-France Regional Council has set up the Participatory Budget for Upper Secondary Schools (BPL) to improve living and studying conditions for students in their schools. This project is part of a participatory democracy approach, in which it is the pupils themselves who are involved in the equipment and renovation projects for their lycée. 

According to the President of a University in Perpignan in the department of the Pyrénées-Orientales which has the third highest rate of unemployment in France: "These bogus students have always existed but in the past three years, they are on the increase, partly due to youth unemployment and a lack of financial support for the transition period between school and work ...".