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The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which represents the seven largest qualification providers in the UK, commissioned an independent report into exam malpractice. Police are investigating an exam leak after a number of students had advance sight of part of a General Certificate of Secondary Education religious studies paper. Another A-level maths paper was offered for sale via social media. Two questions from the paper first appeared on Twitter, offering students the whole paper for £70.

There have been several institutions located in the UK illegally operating under the title ‘university’. The ‘free universities’ like the Ragged University and Free University Brighton (FUB) offer courses generally sustained through free labor, which means they are unlikely to prove enduring. According to the Minister of immigration, the government had “struck off nearly 900 bogus colleges” which operate as portals for illegal immigrants. A Norwich couple was found guilty of fraudulently running the British Nutrition Council and the International Distance College, which defrauded around 900 individuals.

Higher Education Degree Datacheck (Hedd), which monitors fake degrees, has recorded 243 fake institutions. Manchester Open University advertised degrees for fees up to £35,000 on its website and claimed to have a campus on Oxford Road, with 2,000 students from 90 different countries studying degrees in history, English and medicine. Officials were unable to find a trace of the institution. The Oxbridge University of Kilmurry, providing master's degrees, doctorates and professional qualifications on its website is registered in the Gambia.

Apparently, degrees from Aberdeen University and Robert Gordon University can be obtained for as little as £200, complete with university emblems and gold seals. It has emerged that copies of RGU degrees even contained faked signatures. Other institutions being targeted include St Andrews University, Glasgow University, and Edinburgh University. The information has come to light after a Sunday newspaper claimed that one website sold over 3,000 fake qualifications from various education establishments to UK-based buyers between 2013 and 2014. These included degrees, doctorates, and PhDs.

The number of students caught cheating at the UK’s top universities has shot up by a third in three years, with experts warning that institutions are ignoring the problem. A senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London and one of the UK’s leading experts on essay cheating, said: “A growing number of young people also feel more pressure than ever before, often turning to cheating to help them get through their degrees. It’s also easier to access websites that offer paid-to-order essays”.

The University College London (UCL) has declared that its Centre for Blockchain technologies has recently finalized a pilot program permitting MSc graduates in Financial Risk Management to offer immediate confirmation of the academic qualification via bitcoin. London-based startup Gradbase has developed a platform in which all graduates in 2016-2017 of the above course mention can register their degree credential. The validity of this information is verified by the school and followed by the system providing a transaction approving the genuineness of these degrees through bitcoin.

Allegations of academic fraud have been made against nearly 20 alternative higher education providers in London in recent months, the head of the UK’s standards watchdog has said. Warning that fraud and malpractice now pose a “real challenge” to traditional quality assurance in higher education, the chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency, said that his organisation had “recently received and, in some cases, investigated allegations about admissions, malpractice, academic fraud and the falsification of evidence in 19 alternative providers in London”.

Cheating on a very large scale has just been unveiled in England. Reprehensible acts by both students and teachers have been uncovered during the OCR (for Oxford, Cambridge and RSA examinations), run by one of the most renowned exam boards in the country. In order to pass the UK’s most prestigious competitive examinations, 2300 teachers between 2012 and 2016 helped their pupils obtain better marks. In the same period, 3 602 pupils are accused of cheating. More than half of these teachers were accused of "inappropriate assistance" during written tests, to help their students achieve better results.

Thousands of UK nationals have bought fake degrees from a multi-million pound "diploma mill" in Pakistan, a BBC Radio 4's File on Four programme investigation has found. Buyers include NHS consultants, nurses and a large defence contractor. One British buyer spent almost £500,000 on bogus documents. The Department for Education said it was taking "decisive action to crack down on degree fraud" that "cheats genuine learners

It is estimated that the ‘professional essay writing industry’ – services offering to quickly complete any assignment, to any standard, for a fee – is now worth over £100m, providing completed assignments to tens of thousands of students at UK universities every year. And where once it was mainly international students looking to produce work with a better standard of English, it’s a growing trend among stressed native speakers too. One of the largest companies, has seen the number of UK customers increase by a fifth over the last two years.