Cheating is not an issue in the county

The mood is not helped by surveys that reveal a quarter of students admit to plagiarising work and a spate of high-profile thefts of exam papers, which appear on the internet the day before tests.

With marks rising every year and many questioning whether "the bar" has been lowered, honest students must wonder what they have to do to gain recognition for their work.

One leading academic, Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, is adamant the culture of cheating is rife throughout the university system.

He claimed that students cheat and lecturers prefer to "turn a blind eye" rather than confront the problem.

"There is a major conspiracy of silence over this," said Prof Furedi. "A culture has been created which sends the message that second-hand, unoriginal work and cheating are part and parcel of university life.

"Degrees are seen as something you pay for rather than something you have to learn. It's the new ethos of university life."

Others have claimed the problems start at schools, where pupils are allowed to use information gathered directly from the internet.

However, Worcestershire's headteachers have no doubts about the value and authenticity of their pupils' work.

Bernhard Roberts, from Prince Henry's High School, in Evesham, said that schools took sensible precautions, but that cheating was not the issue it appeared in the media.

"I don't think that schools would agree that dishonesty is on the increase," he said.

"We have our own methods of dealing with in-house plagiarism in coursework."

John Tredwell, principal of Worcester Sixth Form College, has advanced plagiarism checks at his disposal but refuted claims that the problem had become commonplace.

If someone is found to have copied work they are given the opportunity to rewrite the piece, but the maximum achievable mark is significantly reduced.

However, he has only experienced one such case at the college and feels certain there has been no rise in dishonesty in recent times.

"A lot of students need to do coursework and there's no real way of knowing how much they can get from the internet," he said. "However we do have a check.

"It looks at text in the coursework compared to text available on the internet and is able to recognise chunks of plagiarism. We only check where we are suspicious, because we can see what students write in class and compare it to their coursework."

In fact, rather than point the finger at declining moral standards among students, both headteachers felt there were issues elsewhere in the system.

"I would certainly say the theft of exam papers is on the increase," said Mr Roberts. "I am concerned about the apparent ease in which the exam papers could be stolen from some places."

In the past month, papers from three leading exam boards were stolen from a London college and examiners are still searching for signs of cheating in at least 20 exam units.

Mr Tredwell went further, adding that the whole exam system was prone to errors because of its unwieldy nature.

"We had nearly 600 candidates sitting tests on one day last week, in the gym, classrooms - everywhere we could," he said.

"There are several different exams going on at the same time and with more shorter papers these days it becomes an incredibly complex procedure.

"If you take into account that many students now have special considerations - some have to use laptops in exams, others receive extra time - it becomes very complicated to control and mistakes can happen."

He said that, in reality, exams were not always the accurate assessment people imagined.

"Exam boards are snowed under. There are not enough markers or examiners and the result is that every year there are quite a lot of errors and mishaps," he warned.

"Exams should not be treated as some sort of scientific process. They are not 100 per cent and they can be a bit of a lottery, with a variable outcome.

"They are marked abroad, such as in India, and papers are often subdivided into actual individual questions and even paragraphs. They are then sent back and totalled and there is scope for errors."

Indeed, it appears students have as much right to question the integrity of the examination system as academics do to point the finger at dishonest students. This may be comforting, if not confidence-inspiring.