Any NSW school that catches an HSC student plagiarising, asking or even paying someone to do their major work, or who deliberately hands an assessment task in late, must now record the offence on a new register, set up seven years after the Independent Commission Against Corruption investigated cheating in take-home exams.
For the first time this year, cheating in school-based assessment tasks will be published along with exam breaches. Students and schools will not be identified but the course, the type of offence, the nature of the assessment and the penalty will be publicly released.
A statewide malpractice register for assessment tasks was one of 20 recommendations in a 2007 ICAC report, which investigated corruption risks in HSC take-home and school assessments, but the register is only being introduced now because it required extensive consultation with schools.
A Board of Studies spokesman said the register would be used to identify the types of tasks that were more vulnerable to cheating, subjects that appeared to have more incidences than others and any variations in penalties. The Board of Studies would then work with schools to make improvements, he said.
The ICAC report came after the Board of Studies referred allegations to the corruption watchdog that suggested some students who attended a private tutoring business received "improper assistance" for work ultimately submitted as part of their HSC assessment.
The students were enrolled in English Extension 2, a subject assessed on a major work that was largely completed away from the direct supervision of the teacher.
Although no findings of corrupt conduct were made, the ICAC said that there were significant corruption risks that needed to be addressed by the Board of Studies and the NSW Department of Education.
"In relation to school-based assessment tasks, there is no consolidated reporting and analysis of the number and range of alleged cases of malpractice," the report said.
"This is because, in relation to school-based assessment tasks, the cases are dealt with by NSW schools with no requirement for the information to be reported to the Board of Studies."
The then principal of the private girls' school PLC Sydney, William McKeith, told the ICAC: "When half the mark for each HSC course is determined by the school, it could be a deficiency that we do not know how many incidents of plagiarism in assessment tasks are routinely identified and what action each school took against the offender."
The latest figures from the Board of Studies show 19 students were caught breaching exam rules last year, four more than in 2012.
There was 463 "non-serious attempt" cases, where students do not answer any multiple choice questions or submit an obscene answer, which was almost twice as many as in 2012, while the Board of Studies received 6267 applications for disability provisions, 5857 of which were either fully or partially approved.
More than 87 per cent of all schools – and more than 86 per cent of state schools – had at least one application for disability provisions last year, the figures show.
