Multiple incidents of exam paper theft targeting British exam boards have raised concerns about student cheating. Hackers stole national exam papers for school-leavers and sold them online to students seeking an unfair advantage.
The exam season in England and Wales, which runs from May 15 to June 27, typically sees an increase in attempts to sell fake exam papers, but genuine data breaches affecting exam boards are uncommon.
Investigations are underway, with suspicions that hackers gained access to a school’s internal email system to request papers from exam boards. The police, government, and National Crime Agency’s cybercrime unit are collaborating on the investigations, while affected exam boards have reported incidents of alleged fraud to the police collectively through the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ).
One incident affected the OCR and Pearson Edexcel examiners, while another cyber incident targeted AQA, the largest exam board in Britain. The investigations are still in their early stages, and authorities are working to determine the extent of the breaches and identify the culprits. Surrey Police reported an allegation of fraud and computer misuse involving a data breach at AQA, with no arrests made at this point.
The main exams in Britain, such as GCSEs and A-Levels, are crucial for university entry, and students caught purchasing stolen exams could face disqualification from their results and be barred from re-sitting the exams for a specific period, potentially jeopardizing their university placements.
With ongoing police investigations, further details are not being disclosed at this time. The exam boards are emphasizing that those found involved in malpractice will face severe consequences.
This development follows a cyberattack in late May that disrupted national end-of-year high school exams in Greece, highlighting the vulnerability of educational systems to cyber threats.
