One story that particularly caught my attention today was the announcement that Edexcel exam chiefs are investing in “Bond-style gadgets” in an attempt to beat the cheats during the summer’s school exams.

The new tech-based approach will include radio tagging bags of exam papers to monitor whether they have been opened or tampered with; inserting invisible letters to check whether papers have been photocopied; and even scanning software that will compare responses to a question and flag up answers that are suspiciously alike.

In my final year of university, we were given a demo of the anti-plagiarism software that was used to scan every essay we submitted. The results were pretty terrifying and should have been enough to shock any potential plagiarist. The sample essay we were shown was covered in highlights with different colours depicting phrases that matched other students’ work, sentences pulled straight from the key course texts and even content that came from the net. If any of these were not accurately referenced and acknowledged in the footnotes, there would be trouble.

It seems to me that this kind of monitoring is an incredibly positive step forward and might actually be the only way to ensure that students get the results they deserve. The spokesperson for Edexcel surely thinks so and comments in The Independent, “These measures helped to make 2007 a year with no major security breaches.”

It’s just a shame they won’t be able to be say the same for this year’s exams as one paper has already been given out with the answers conveniently written on the back, (students won’t be asked to resit the exam).

Rebecca Wheeler