IB Exam Leaks on a Massive Global Scale as Time Zone Cheating Confirmed
This Saturday, 6th July 2024, will see IB students receiving their results from the May examinations – but, with Time Zone Cheating now seemingly ubiquitous and endemic, will the IB results 2024 unfairly disadvantage honest students?
This is one of the many issues we will be exploring on IB Results Day this Saturday on SchoolsCompared.com in our live stream broadcast throughout the day. You can contact us with stories and photographs at [email protected] between now and Sunday.
The question of whether this year’s IB results remain credible is being raised by worried (and in many cases angry) students (and schools) across the world, in the face of what is now called “Time Zone Cheating” – this describing how students, in an earlier time zone, publish the papers for exams so that students in later time zones can cheat and prepare their answers before entering their IB exams. Those students who have not cheated are up in arms and fearful of the consequences.
We now know that all IB exam papers were published online, so this is not even a problem that only impacts one or two examinations. The problem is structural, wide-ranging and severe.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/200712702@N06/
Although it is believed that this mass release of papers is the result of Time Zone Cheating, others have postulated potential leaks from within the IB, which we believe unlikely. We do know that many papers were recycled from memory. It does seem incomprehensible, however, that many leaked papers seem to be copies of original papers.
How could IB Time Zone Cheating impact a student’s grade?
How could time zone cheating potentially impact the results of honest students? For example, could someone Time Zone cheating in the US – which has almost 2,000 IB World Schools – impact the results of an honest candidate in Australia, which has more than 200 IB World Schools and is 14 hours ahead of the US?
It’s possible.
This is because of how the IB assessments work. Each candidate receives a certain number of marks for each paper, which is determined against a specific marking scheme. These marks are then converted into a grade, but these grade boundaries change every session. This is because the questions that candidates are asked to complete will be different and so grade boundaries need to vary to reflect easier or more difficult tasks. If a large number of students take part in Time Zone Cheating, this could give the impression that the tasks were easier than they really were. This, in theory, could skew the grade boundaries, potentially leading to honest students receiving lower grades than they would have if no cheating had taken place.
What are the implications for IB Results Day 2024?
As a result, theoretically at least, it seems that there is no obvious way that the results of this year’s exams can be reliable, or made reliable. More worrying, if the IB maintains its statistical grade boundaries and splay of grades, it is unavoidable that many students who did not cheat will receive lower grades than they would have been entitled to had cheating not been rampant. This is the crux of the problem.
There seems no possible way for the IB to resolve this issue without hurting the life chances of some students… unless, that is, they allow more students to achieve higher grades by lowering grade boundaries to ensure that no students loses out. This, however, would see less differentiation between students, raising issues with university recruitment.
Even if the IB does this, however, and regardless of how it calculates grade boundaries to try and respond fairly (or otherwise) to Time Zone Cheating in the May 2024 IB examinations, the end result calls into question the reliability of this year’s results in toto. We believe, on balance of probability, that the veracity of IB results in 2024 are tainted – and a generation of students might have to pay a high, and unfair, price. It is possible that young people are going to suffer because they will not be operating on a level playing field and examination results are, beyond argument, corrupted.
What is the IB going to do to protect students from Time Zone Cheating?
At this stage, it does not seem very much.
This is because to date the IB is claiming there is no widespread problem. The IB has assured students that it can rely on the results of the May 2024 examinations and that action was swiftly taken:
“We are acutely aware that IB students around the world have worked tirelessly to be ready to sit their exams and have held themselves to the highest of academic standards, and we are taking active steps to ensure that the integrity of the remainder of the exam session remains intact.”
The IB claims that it has:
“…identified the source of this activity and are taking appropriate steps to hold those responsible accountable. Where we have identified students, the IB will open a formal investigation for malpractice, and students may receive no marks for their examinations or no grade for the relevant subject. As a consequence, no Diploma certificate will be awarded, and students can also be banned from re-sitting any examinations.”
The IB claims that they:
“…have discovered [only] a very small number of students [whom] appear to have engaged in online “time zone cheating”.
Given the widespread credible evidence of leaks the idea that only a small number of students cheated, or have been impacted, does seem a stretching claim – and certainly students, and many teachers we have spoken with, are not convinced at all.
It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Time Zone Cheating has taken place and in previous years the IB has taken a more interventionist approach, including basing eventual scoring much more on internal work completed during each student’s course of study, rather than weighting examinations. We think that the IB should again be adopting this approach. Instead, it is holding firm that there is not enough evidence to justify this sort of intervention.
We also think that the IB must now put in place measures to ensure that Time Zone Cheating can no longer occur, as is the case with all other global examinations. It seems to us that this situation should never have been allowed to recur.
The IB has been already burned – but it is students that have paid the price for the IB sticking their heads in the ground and playing ostrich.
IBDP and IBCP results for the May 2024 session (for IB exams taken between 24th April 2024 and 17th May 2024) will be officially distributed to schools on 5th July 2024, but students will only receive their scores at 3pm (UAE time) on Saturday, July 6 2024 for the IB Diploma Programme and IB Career-related Programme. Students can access their results by logging in here using the code and your school will have given you.
Will all this matter? Can Students do anything to Appeal?
Yes, it potentially does matter – unless students are going to a US university or one in which they have already received a formal acceptance or are subject (as in the case of India) to university entrance examinations that override other qualifications.
Our advice for those attending other universities where grades do matter, including those in the UK, is to see whether you have been accepted. If you are accepted, regardless of your grade, our advice is not to fret – ultimately your IB grades will be significantly less important than your eventual degree. What matters is securing a place at your chosen university on your chosen degree course. You will know that the results this year are unreliable, that will have to be enough. We believe that most universities will also be aware of the issue – but their hands will be tied in many courses by having only limited places to offer students. Their capacity to be more generous in awarding places may well be limited.
For those, however, that do not meet the grades required, and are then turned down by their chosen university, the issue is self evidently much more serious and will cause justifiable distress. In these cases, students could consider asking for their grades to be remarked through their school’s IB Diploma Coordinator via submission of an “Enquiry Upon Results”– but remember that grades can go up or down. If you have been a victim of higher grade boundaries caused by Time Zone Cheating too arguably this will not help you anyway. The issue is that grade boundaries may be distorted upwards so that your grades are not worth what they should be. It is far less likely that your paper has been marked incorrectly.
This ultimately, very unfairly, leaves you with few places to turn. You can appeal to Admissions Officers and ask your school to make an intervention too with your chosen university. Beyond this, fighting the IB on this is likely to be a futile endeavour. After this you are left with the option of resits, or choosing a different university or course. Neither is satisfactory.
Has anyone asked if the IB will rethink their approach to Time Zone Cheating?
Yes, it seems at least one student has and the response of the IB in May 2024 seems to have shifted. Rather than claiming that few students cheated, it is now arguing that having access to an exam paper and model answers before the exam will make no difference (see emphasis below):
“Dear XXX
Thank you for your message received 8 June 2024, concerning timezone cheating during the May examinations.
We have identified a number of students involved including the person who set up the main site sharing the content. We are starting formal investigations into these students which could result in them not receiving marks for their examination and or relevant subjects, and potentially the non-award of the IB qualification. Alongside this, we are working closely with our schools, Associations and Heads to ensure that all students are reminded of the requirements of our academic integrity policy. .
We appreciate your concern regarding results. The core philosophy of International Baccalaureate assessment is a focus on acquisition and demonstration of higher order thinking skills, such as analysis and critical evaluation. Rudimentary knowledge recall plays a negligible part in our assessment components. IB assessments pro-actively seek application and conclusive demonstration of knowledge and skill sets in relation to complex problems and stimulus materials. Students are tested on argument and explanation and are required to show their working. The competencies that IB assessments seek to test take months, if not years, of consistent application to acquire and cannot be mastered in the few hours prior to examination. If students had proactively sought out partially and inadequately recalled exam content in the short period before sitting their examinations, they would not have enough time to assimilate nor apply conceptual and procedural knowledge. It is important to remember that grade boundaries vary every year, and look at the overall evidence on how difficult individual exam questions were. For more information about how the IB awards grades, please see this page.
We recommend you maintain contact with your school coordinator if you have any additional concerns and we send you our best wishes for the publication of results.
Yours sincerely
IB community experience”
We think this does not stack up at all. We have seen convincing evidence of not only exam papers, but also model exam answers constructed using Chat GPT, distributed online – and it is inconceivable that this knowledge would not result in higher examination results for those students with early access to papers.
The view of schools
Unsurprisingly, schools will not comment to us on the record.
Schools we have spoken with have two concerns.
First, they do not really want to draw attention to this issue as if the results are questioned, years of work by students will be devalued. That is unfair – and we agree. But in a school where no student has cheated, the implication is that a sizeable number are going to achieve inaccurate and much lower results than they are entitled too because of Time Zone Cheating. That is also unfair. This leaves school between the Scylla and Charybdis of admitting the unfairness and upsetting their students, or not admitting the unfairness and also upsetting their students. There is no way out for them. The IB has placed them in an impossible position.
Second, little wonder that schools are angry with the IB. The consensus is that this should have been sorted out and should not be a problem that is still occurring. If the IB does not get its act together next year we can see at least some schools dropping the IB altogether – and with justification.
Our view
We care about schools, students and parents. We too could put our heads in the sand and not risk upsetting the powerhouse IB. But this matters – and sometimes you do in life you do have to put your head above the parapet.
Pictured: cheating and its consequences are explored in the TV programme Suits.
Anyone that has watched Suits will have grappled with the issue of cheating. In the TV series, the lead character takes examinations for other students. It raises moral questions, and gives an insight into the impact on the lives of those that cheat, and those that make cheating possible. Amongst other questions it asks is whether exams are even fair given that many students struggle with them despite being hugely talented.
This year’s IB results, however, are not the fluffy stuff of TV drama. They are about the real lives and life chances of our young people.
We believe that students, schools, teachers, Mums and Dads have been badly let down by the IB. We think that they have every right to be angry, fearful and distraught at the injustice that is coming down the track and which they are powerless to do anything about.
If the grade boundaries remain intact, students are going to be hurt. And we think this Saturday when results are distributed that they will remain intact because the IB will seek to salvage credibility over justice and the futures of individual students.
The alternative, to allow more students to pass with higher grades would draw attention to their failure – and they will not want to do this.
The only other option, to have moved to using coursework to calculate fairer results, has already been discounted by the IB. We think that this was yet another terrible mistake. It is too late for the IB to do this now.
So where does that leave us?
Our message to the IB is to never let this happen again.
Our message to those students who have cheated is simple – was it worth it? You will have to live with yourself knowing that your actions have hurt other students, with their own dreams and ambitions.
This is our message to all other IB students, teachers and schools. You are AMAZING. The results this year, whatever the part you have played, are more than likely not going to accurately reflect your achievements. That will never take away, however, your impressive talents and the difference each of you do and will make in the world. Our schools and teachers are some of the very best in the world. And so are our students. Do not let a piece of paper ever define you. You are so much more important, special and impressive than that. You have amazing futures ahead of you – and no one will or can take that away. Never give up the fight. Never stop believing in yourself. Ultimately life has a way of putting things right in the most unexpected ways.
Justice will prevail.
You can read our original story on Time Zone cheating here.
Watch our live broadcast of IB Results Day 2024 this Saturday ONLY on SchoolsCompared.com HERE.
Further information
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