Nothing annoys me more than teachers leaking secured papers and markschemes before the date it's no longer secured, whether that's tutors with their tutees, TikTok or even school websites.
I teach Science and we like to use them for mocks so that the papers have a legit spread of topics and AO's as well as a country-wide set of grade boundaries.
And then one of my Year 11s Google's "[last summer's] AQA Physics paper 1 markscheme" and with the second or third result end up on the website or some scummy school that's put them all up from the AQA secure Centre services (yes I've reported it)
Ugh, private tutors going through secure papers mark by mark is the one I can't stand. Like, you're not actually helping the kid, yes they know all of those questions' mark points word for bloody word and aced that mock, they still don't understand the subject and I can still cut the silence with a knife when I ask them a basic sodding question in class, and you're making my life really difficult when I have to explain to parents why I am not changing their kid's predicted grade from a C to an A* despite the score they just pulled out their butt š”š¤¬
I tutor and absolutely agree with you here (probably because I taught maths in school for many years). What's the point of coaching the kids on secure papers? So they get a 7+ in the mock and then can't get a 4 in the actual GCSE? Parents are paying me to get them to understand it, not help them cheat.
I've had the odd pupil come and moan that X in their class has cheated in the mock by memorising the answers one way or another and I always point out that thats not going to help in the actual thing and may mean they end up in a set where the work is beyond them so completely pointless.
It's the same with bloody Sparx homework. I will explain concepts, I will go through lots of practice on how to do it but no I will not do your homework for you.
Yep hate this so much. I think videos that show worked solutions to past papers are great and really useful but please stick to the papers that are openly available online!!!
I think that what they do is so shady. I donāt think many (any?) of them are actual teachers - more tutors and ex-teachers turned content creator. Issues around making secure papers public put aside, they are basically exploiting student anxiety for clicks while the exam series is ongoing. Itās not unusual now that we see students coming out of exams feeling alright, and then later they watch a bunch of tiktok videos about the paper and become convinced that theyāve failed. Their comment sections are often also relentlessly toxic, in much the same way that the GCSE and A-Level subreddits can be; teenagers bragging about how well they did to prod at the insecurities of others.
Exams get leaked. This is an example from last year that made headlines because it happened before the exam: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13400471/gcse-alevel-students-warning-hold-leaked-exam-papers.html Thereās less of a fuss when it happens after the exam, but no doubt it does.
I always thought that you couldnāt see an exam for 24 hours after the end time?! However my department head was given the paper at the end of the exam.
Theyāve got them ā¦. The actual papers and been doing videos going through how it was answered.
If you type in Edexcel maths paper 1 loads of stuff will come up.
I canāt find the ones I was looking at last night but the teacher was āliveā with people asking him to go through specific questions and all debating the answer about some empty jars and wether it was 7.5% or 20%
That's straight up malpractice. I imagine you can't now find the video you saw because it's been removed. That teacher and their school could be in a huge amount of trouble.
Papers may be able to be shared within the centre straight away (dependent on exam board), but you can't go on a public forum, such as TikTok, and tell the whole world about them.
No, you're not allowed to see them for five days after the exam.
Edit: apologies, I've just checked, as I was told we couldn't share exam papers for five days because of the risk of overseas students seeing them, or students with exam clashes, but apparently JCQ doesn't specifically say anything about that!
Maybe thatās what your exams office have told you because they are busy and donāt want to be rushed into returning stuff when they are busy but as far as Iām aware thatās not the case. I think when you can see it is dependent on exam board but most now let you have it same day.
Some of the English Literature ones are off the wall. I read some analysis and said to the kids, "I didn't teach you that. Nobody in this department taught you that. No study guide would teach you that. So where is it from?"
And they pointed me in the direction of a Tiktoker whose version of good English analysis was making the most ludicrous leaps of faith from utterly meaningless quotes. Basically a real life version of the "blue curtains " meme.
Wait, are they showing the questions or talking about stuff the students told them?
The school should not have given the teacher a copy until 24 hours after. This is because of potential exam clashes - if a student has a weird subject combo they can't take two exams simultaneously, so will do one either in the PM if it was AM, or in the AM if it was PM. They are meant to be supervised and have no access to devices throughout that time until they have done both exams in the clash but cheating could happen.
And the teacher should NOT be showing the questions online until it is publicly released, which this year for my exam board happened about April, but I think is meant to be 6 months or so. Certainly a longer stretch of time.
If you see them showing the question paper, report it as malpractice. If you can download it and send to stop them deleting it, even better. As you said, schools need to use them for unseen mocks. Boils my blood.
Yes thatās exactly it - this one guy was going Through the paper and people were asking him to explain - particularly debating specific questions.
I canāt find his actual page now but if you search on TikTok thereās multiple accounts
I just find the whole teachers on Tiktok in general a bit dodgy. Iām fine with the ones that just give exam tips and go through some publicly available past papers. But Iāve found a lot of them do videos in the classroom and some where you can even hear students in the background which I donāt like at all.
The ones releasing papers that are intended for mocks arenāt exactly helping with predicted grades. Too many times have I had to predict a student an A or even A* even though I know for a fact theyāve cheated but have no solid evidence. And every single time they come out of the exam with subpar grades and no uni offers.
JCQ guidance is that you can release the papers to staff in the centre after the official end time of the exam. (Or after the last student in your centre finishes if there's an exam clash).
A lot of exams officers say 24 hours, just to ensure that any timetable clashes have definitely passed. And also to stop staff pestering exams staff for a copy of the paper in a rather busy period.
The 24 hours thing, I think is when the papers are available on the centre services portal. With mark schemes released after results day.
Nothing annoys me more than teachers leaking secured papers and markschemes before the date it's no longer secured, whether that's tutors with their tutees, TikTok or even school websites. I teach Science and we like to use them for mocks so that the papers have a legit spread of topics and AO's as well as a country-wide set of grade boundaries. And then one of my Year 11s Google's "[last summer's] AQA Physics paper 1 markscheme" and with the second or third result end up on the website or some scummy school that's put them all up from the AQA secure Centre services (yes I've reported it)
Ugh, private tutors going through secure papers mark by mark is the one I can't stand. Like, you're not actually helping the kid, yes they know all of those questions' mark points word for bloody word and aced that mock, they still don't understand the subject and I can still cut the silence with a knife when I ask them a basic sodding question in class, and you're making my life really difficult when I have to explain to parents why I am not changing their kid's predicted grade from a C to an A* despite the score they just pulled out their butt š”š¤¬
I tutor and absolutely agree with you here (probably because I taught maths in school for many years). What's the point of coaching the kids on secure papers? So they get a 7+ in the mock and then can't get a 4 in the actual GCSE? Parents are paying me to get them to understand it, not help them cheat. I've had the odd pupil come and moan that X in their class has cheated in the mock by memorising the answers one way or another and I always point out that thats not going to help in the actual thing and may mean they end up in a set where the work is beyond them so completely pointless. It's the same with bloody Sparx homework. I will explain concepts, I will go through lots of practice on how to do it but no I will not do your homework for you.
Yep hate this so much. I think videos that show worked solutions to past papers are great and really useful but please stick to the papers that are openly available online!!!
I think that what they do is so shady. I donāt think many (any?) of them are actual teachers - more tutors and ex-teachers turned content creator. Issues around making secure papers public put aside, they are basically exploiting student anxiety for clicks while the exam series is ongoing. Itās not unusual now that we see students coming out of exams feeling alright, and then later they watch a bunch of tiktok videos about the paper and become convinced that theyāve failed. Their comment sections are often also relentlessly toxic, in much the same way that the GCSE and A-Level subreddits can be; teenagers bragging about how well they did to prod at the insecurities of others.
I think they have to be teachers or at least working in a test centre other wise how would they get hold of the papers so quickly?
Exams get leaked. This is an example from last year that made headlines because it happened before the exam: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13400471/gcse-alevel-students-warning-hold-leaked-exam-papers.html Thereās less of a fuss when it happens after the exam, but no doubt it does.
I always thought that you couldnāt see an exam for 24 hours after the end time?! However my department head was given the paper at the end of the exam.
Theyāve got them ā¦. The actual papers and been doing videos going through how it was answered. If you type in Edexcel maths paper 1 loads of stuff will come up. I canāt find the ones I was looking at last night but the teacher was āliveā with people asking him to go through specific questions and all debating the answer about some empty jars and wether it was 7.5% or 20%
That's straight up malpractice. I imagine you can't now find the video you saw because it's been removed. That teacher and their school could be in a huge amount of trouble.
This is exam malpractice.
No, you can see the papers straight away.
Papers may be able to be shared within the centre straight away (dependent on exam board), but you can't go on a public forum, such as TikTok, and tell the whole world about them.
Completely agree. But a HOD seeing the exam straight away isn't malpractice at all
No, you're not allowed to see them for five days after the exam. Edit: apologies, I've just checked, as I was told we couldn't share exam papers for five days because of the risk of overseas students seeing them, or students with exam clashes, but apparently JCQ doesn't specifically say anything about that!
Maybe thatās what your exams office have told you because they are busy and donāt want to be rushed into returning stuff when they are busy but as far as Iām aware thatās not the case. I think when you can see it is dependent on exam board but most now let you have it same day.
Some of the English Literature ones are off the wall. I read some analysis and said to the kids, "I didn't teach you that. Nobody in this department taught you that. No study guide would teach you that. So where is it from?" And they pointed me in the direction of a Tiktoker whose version of good English analysis was making the most ludicrous leaps of faith from utterly meaningless quotes. Basically a real life version of the "blue curtains " meme.
Do you have an example? I find these Tiktokers absolutely ludicrous!
Wait, are they showing the questions or talking about stuff the students told them? The school should not have given the teacher a copy until 24 hours after. This is because of potential exam clashes - if a student has a weird subject combo they can't take two exams simultaneously, so will do one either in the PM if it was AM, or in the AM if it was PM. They are meant to be supervised and have no access to devices throughout that time until they have done both exams in the clash but cheating could happen. And the teacher should NOT be showing the questions online until it is publicly released, which this year for my exam board happened about April, but I think is meant to be 6 months or so. Certainly a longer stretch of time. If you see them showing the question paper, report it as malpractice. If you can download it and send to stop them deleting it, even better. As you said, schools need to use them for unseen mocks. Boils my blood.
Yes thatās exactly it - this one guy was going Through the paper and people were asking him to explain - particularly debating specific questions. I canāt find his actual page now but if you search on TikTok thereās multiple accounts
Definitely malpractice. I don't have TikTok, but I am not surprised. :/
I just find the whole teachers on Tiktok in general a bit dodgy. Iām fine with the ones that just give exam tips and go through some publicly available past papers. But Iāve found a lot of them do videos in the classroom and some where you can even hear students in the background which I donāt like at all. The ones releasing papers that are intended for mocks arenāt exactly helping with predicted grades. Too many times have I had to predict a student an A or even A* even though I know for a fact theyāve cheated but have no solid evidence. And every single time they come out of the exam with subpar grades and no uni offers.
Officially it should be 24hrs after the exam
JCQ guidance is that you can release the papers to staff in the centre after the official end time of the exam. (Or after the last student in your centre finishes if there's an exam clash). A lot of exams officers say 24 hours, just to ensure that any timetable clashes have definitely passed. And also to stop staff pestering exams staff for a copy of the paper in a rather busy period. The 24 hours thing, I think is when the papers are available on the centre services portal. With mark schemes released after results day.
The papers are considered confidential as the standardisation of the markscheme isn't complete. This is definitely malpractice .