Cheating now worst in functional skills exams

Functional skills exams suffered more malpractice penalties than any other vocational or technical qualification after cases of cheating doubled in three years, figures reveal.

Meanwhile, plagiarism in non-academic courses has soared due to misuse of artificial intelligence – making it the joint most-common type of student malpractice reported for vocational qualifications alongside mobile phone misuse.

The findings were uncovered through ‘malpractice in vocational and technical qualifications’ statistics, published this week by Ofqual for the first time since 2021.

A spokesperson said “renewed interest” in the data, combined with the development of an updated methodology, prompted the exams regulator to resume publication.

Dysfunctional skills

Ofqual’s figures cover malpractice for the three academic years from 2022-23 to 2024-25 across “higher stakes” vocational qualification types, including those featuring in performance tables (PTQs) – comprising 720,000 certificates last year, and functional skills (FSQs) – comprising 326,000 certificates.

Student malpractice cases for PTQs fell from 1,345 in 2022-23 to 1,195 in 2024-25.

But cases of cheating in FSQs – alternative qualifications to English and maths GCSEs – soared from 610 to 1,385 in the same period.

Ofqual’s methodological change to the dataset means figures now relate only to malpractice cases that resulted in at least one penalty.

It is likely the figures don’t reflect the full extent of cheating, as some instances are not discovered, while others may have been investigated but did not result in a penalty due to a lack of evidence.

 

Pens down

‘Breach of examination rules and regulations’, which can refer to a student not following instructions such as continuing to write after being told to stop or not sitting in their designated seat, has consistently been the most common cause for FSQ penalties – accounting for 495 cases last year.

But the share is dropping. The percentage of student malpractice cases in this category fell from 61.7 per cent in 2022-23 to 35.5 per cent in 2024-25.

The spike in overall FSQ penalties has been fuelled by cases where students ‘fail to abide by the conditions of supervision designated to maintain the security of the examinations’, such as leaving an exam early or removing scripts from the examination room. Such cases rocketed from 20, or 2.9 per cent, to 480, or 34.6 per cent, over the three-year period.

Meanwhile, the inclusion of “inappropriate offensive or obscene material in scripts, coursework or portfolios” was also a rising cause of student penalties in FSQs, rising from 10 to 25.

The findings chime with an FE Week investigation from 2024 that found soaring numbers of suspensions and permanent exclusions in colleges due to a rise in challenging behaviour post-​pandemic.

Ofqual said it does not hold data on the reasons behind trends in malpractice but added that increased reporting doesn’t necessarily mean more malpractice is occurring, and may reflect improvements in detection.

Rise of the robots

Mobile phone misuse continues to be the most common reason for student penalties in PTQs – accounting for 420 cases last year – but the proportion fell from 40.6 per cent of all student malpractice in 2022-23 to 34.3 per cent in 2024-25.

Plagiarism also surged to account for 34.3 per cent of cases last year, up from 4.8 per cent three years ago.

Ofqual provided a breakdown of plagiarism that includes and excludes the “misuse of artificial intelligence” for the first time.

Of the 420 cases in PTQs last year, 320 (77.2 per cent) were due to AI abuse. For functional skills, misuse of AI accounted for 92.7 per cent (50 cases).

Malpractice involving mobile phones for FSQs hit 135 cases last year, up from 105 in both prior years.

Ofqual’s chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham this week urged students not to take mobile phones or smart devices into exam halls as the summer 2026 exam series begins, warning that doing so puts their qualifications at “serious risk”.

“Do not become one of those statistics and risk your qualification and your future prospects. Keep your phone out of the exam hall,” he said.

Debarment department

The most common type of penalty issued to students in PTQs last year was ‘loss of marks’, accounting for 515 cases, a fall from 570 in 2022-23.

For functional skills, ‘loss of aggregation or certification opportunity’ accounted for most penalties – 735 cases last year compared to just 115 three years prior.

Loss of aggregation or certification can include “debarment”, which was applied to 10 FSQ students last year. Most cases, 710, resulted in disqualification from an FSQ unit.

Malpractice what you preach

Penalties handed to staff for PTQs fell significantly from 280 in 2023-24 to 180 last year. The number of malpractice cases involving whole centres (individual colleges and training providers) for PTQs also dropped from 155 to 130 over the same period.

But malpractice cases involving functional skills staff increased from 45 to 50, and penalties for FSQ centres rose from 30 to 45.

Staff and centre penalties for both qualification types were mostly driven by maladministration, which generally constitutes mistakes or poor process where there is no intention to do harm.