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A Nottingham teacher has collected 3,800 reports on corruption in the international school system that deal with nepotism, fraud, and cheating. In England, they highlight structural "reform", with its waste of money on free schools that never open, the horrific ongoing costs of successive Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs), and the way schools are pitched against each other to survive. Examples include an academy boss telling teachers to cheat on exams and the widespread relocation of students to improve school performance.

The assessment watchdog Ofqual figures for the 2017-2018 academic year show 1,539 penalties for malpractice in vocational qualifications, of which 55 per cent were for students, 39 per cent for staff, and 6 per cent for schools and colleges. There were 606 penalties issued to staff, with the most common offense being “improper assistance to candidates”, which accounted for 75 per cent of all penalties. Only 7 per cent of penalties for staff came in the form of suspensions or bans. In 45 per cent of cases, staff received a written warning, while 41 per cent of the penalties involved further training. The most common type of cheating reported was plagiarism, which accounted for 46 per cent of all student penalties, followed by in the use of mobile phones or other communication devices in exams, accounted for 19 per cent.

The police are carrying out a fraud investigation into a languages teacher who claimed extra cash from parents for school trips. The teacher who planned three residential trips for the 2017 summer term asked parents at a school in Huntingdon for additional "behaviour deposits" and charged pupils 20 euros each just to board the coach. The Teacher Regulation Agency professional concluded the teacher's conduct "fell short of the expected standards of the profession" and "the offence of fraud is relevant".

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.

A new system of performance-related pay in schools risks fuelling a rise in fraud as teachers attempt to falsify pupils' results to win salary rises. Teachers could be tempted to "over-egg" children's work to prove they are doing a good job and the proposals could also lead to major employment disputes within schools if teachers who fail to receive higher pay lodge official discrimination claims.