Teacher, Students Reveal Cheating, Lack Of Consistent Rules In Hamber’s Skills Room

Photo Credit: Zak Tucker

Hamber’s skills rooms have become rife with cheating and a lack of consistent procedures, say students and staff who spoke to The Nest. Some students have been caught cheating, while others confirmed that they’ve witnessed suspicious behaviour, heard about direct accounts of cheating, or seen students provided with too much support on tests.

Among seventeen students The Nest spoke with — who have all spent time in the skills room as leadership students, enrolled pupils, or made use of the space during FIT or other times — nine described some form of cheating in the skills room. 

Two students admitted to cheating themselves, three witnessed cheating or heard firsthand accounts of it, two had seen behaviour that was highly likely to be cheating, one student witnessed attempted cheating, and one leadership student admitted to giving away too much information during a test. Only one such account involved intervention from a staff member.

Mr. J. Tso (Special Education) confirmed to The Nest that he has caught six students cheating since the beginning of the school year. However, he noted that he doesn’t know how many students have been caught cheating overall, just how many interventions he has personally made. 

“I've seen people cheat all the time [...] Either they'll just bring their phone into the [testing rooms], they'll bring papers with them, or write stuff on their hands [...] It’s not that hard,” said a source who requested anonymity to be able to speak freely about the skills room.

“I have seen someone fully admit [to me] to writing all the multiple choice answers on their arm and saying, ‘I just took this [biology] test,’” said another student, adding that the alleged cheating took place in the first semester of this year.

“I think someone else in their class [...] took a picture of the test after they got it back [...] That person who cheated got 100 [per cent],” they told The Nest, on the condition they remain anonymous to readers. The student who allegedly cheated could not be reached for a request for comment.

“There was this one time in [the 2021/2022 school year] where I pulled out my phone to look up the amount of protons in something, although, for most cases, they don't let you go in with your phone or your bag at all,” added another student, stating that they’ve noticed a recent tightening of security in the skills room.

Asked for comment on the matter, “As far as I can tell, what we try to do is invigilate well,” Mr. Tso said. “We do only have so much power. In the past, when we had more support worker staffing, we were able to assign a support worker for almost each block of the eight skills blocks that we run. Now, it's [mostly] left to the skills teacher.”

When asked if devices are allowed in testing rooms, “For the most part, it'll be no,” Mr. Tso replied. “Definitely no phones, unless the [classroom] teacher says it's completely open-book [...] and open-Internet, which I’ve never seen [...] happen.” However, he added that students are allowed to type out answers on tests using the word processor Notepad if they have the accommodation listed on their Individualized Education Plan (IEP), or if the classroom teacher specifies that device use is permitted.

“We like to see the screens. If they start shifting screens away from our line of sight, then we ask them to shift over,” Mr. Tso said.

When asked how the near ban on phones in testing rooms is enforced, Mr. Tso shared that teachers “tell them to put their devices in their school bag.” He added that teachers “don't pat [students] down although sometimes you kind of think, you know […] so if we see bulky things in pockets, we actually ask them specifically.”

Policies on academic dishonesty are made clear to students at least three times before they begin a test, Mr. Tso added. The school code of conduct, instructions from classroom teachers, and reminders from skills room staff all serve to warn students against cheating, he said.

“At that point, there's no excuse. Not that the goal is to do anything huge, but they do need to have a consequence, and they need to learn not to ever do that again.” 

However, students who spoke to The Nest point to a vastly different reality, where students sneak in devices, un-deterred by teachers’ words.

“It's not impossible that many students will have been able to bring them in anyway if teachers trust [...] that it's in their bag,” said a student who used their phone during a test to look up answers.

“[Students] will say they put [their phone] in their bag, but they [actually] put it in their pocket,” said another source.

Students are also sometimes responsible for transporting tests from their classroom to the skills room, multiple sources confirmed.

“While you're walking with the test, you can just cheat on the way there,” said one student, although they shared that they had never tried it.

“Sometimes, some teachers ask you to leave your bag in the [class]room. Others will tell you to bring your backpack,” the source added, further describing the test-transport process.

When The Nest asked if students are allowed to transport tests between classrooms, Mr. Tso said, “That one is generally a no-no. But if a [classroom] teacher is okaying it, that's kind of out of my jurisdiction.”

Once they began their tests, students also reported that staff in the skills room often provided excessive help on tests. 

“Certain teachers will also just give you answers to questions, when if you took the test with your whole class, they wouldn’t. [...] So say, if you're doing a math equation and [...] you're trying to figure out [what] a certain variable [means in the context of] the question, they'll just tell you what the variable [represents], and then you’ll already know how to solve the equation, so they just gave you the answer,” one student shared. 

Mr. Tso confirmed with The Nest that students are given help with test questions, but couldn’t verify whether or not the proper procedure for aid is consistently followed. 

“In terms of aid, I think our policy is, typically, we can help them understand the question, but we can't give them the answer. And if it requires over-explanation to understand the question [...] then the idea [...] is that they should not be, for example, explaining critical criteria or explaining the definition of a keyword or term that will help them answer the question,” said Mr. Tso. “Whether [this idea is] followed, I can't tell; I don’t monitor every interaction between staff and students.”

“I think some teachers are [...] more lenient than other teachers in terms of what they tell for a question,” added another source.

Leadership students, including Peer Counsellors, peer tutors, and community service students, may also be called upon to provide support during tests.

When asking questions during a test, a student will usually approach a teacher first, who may then refer the younger student to a leadership student, since the supervising teacher may not be well-versed in the topic being tested, according to a leadership student who spoke to The Nest.

“So [leadership students] have to help [other students] during tests. And the goal of that would be to help them understand the question, but it seems like they're trying to get more out of it and trying to have [leadership students] do the question,” the source added.

Teachers don’t supervise the interaction between leadership students and those taking tests, the source said, and no teachers or other leadership students have any explicit instruction on the level of support that can be provided to students during tests.

“I'm not going to fault the teachers,” the source added. “They'll be expecting you don't solve it, right? But I feel like it's so easy for [leadership students] to get tricked into doing that,” they said, describing a graphing test where the student appeared to have little prior knowledge of relevant concepts.

“Everything was graphing [...] So if you don't understand the very, very, very basics of graphing, and you're asking for help, and [as a leadership student] you want to help, so you'll have to teach them how to do it, right? But by teaching them how to do it, [you] kind of teach them how to get the answer. And you don’t want to do that.” 

The source described to The Nest that they tried to help the student by explaining the concept of y = mx + b by describing what the variables meant. However, reflecting on the situation, they realized that  “The mistake I made was that I assumed they knew what to do,” they said. “It kind of got to a point where, [I was] like, oh, shoot. I'm basically doing what they should be doing.’”

In this instance, the student still didn’t answer the question correctly, “but it's still a pretty dangerous situation to be in,” the leadership student cautioned. “Because let's say you have somebody a little brighter [who] was able to put the pieces together just like that. Then you kind of messed up the teacher and the test.”

When asked what they would have done if the student eventually answered the problems correctly, the source shared that they “probably wouldn't have been able to do anything. If you tell the teacher, then you kind of feel like a jerk, right? [...] Because it's your fault.”

When asked by The Nest about the amount of instruction given to leadership students on what support they can provide to younger peers taking tests, Mr. Tso didn’t provide a direct answer. He only stated that skills rooms “don't always have [leadership students] in the room. It's actually rare these days.”

The Nest also heard, however, that while cheating and a lack of consistent procedures are affecting test-taking in the skills room, such issues are not confined to the space.

“For kids like me who were gonna cheat anyway, it doesn't make much of a difference. It's not like you were gonna just not cheat because you couldn't take it in the skills room, you would have just cheated anyway,” said a student who used their phone during a test in the skills room.

Mr. Tso also warns that discussion around cheating in the skills room may impede students’ ability to make use of the accommodations they require to succeed academically and could increase stigma around using the room.

“I worry that [discussion about cheating] is going to create potential rifts between [...] students receiving that IEP accommodation to be able to write their tests in skills and any perception or misperception from staff, [who decide whether] to actually send their students to skills.

“It’s the objective truth that certain students have a real need to come out to a testing room in order to write their exams. It's recommended by specialists as well, depending on the case, oftentimes a certified psychologist, a pediatrician, an outside therapist, or outside clinical counselor.”

However, the skills room’s immense benefit was also a nearly ubiquitous sentiment expressed by students who spoke to The Nest.

“In grade 10, I was struggling with math a lot at the start, and once I started getting help from my teacher at the time, Mr. B. Gibson (Learning Strategies), my math grade went up from 65 [per cent] at midterms to 84 [per cent],” said Dinu Spataru (11), who generally doesn’t take tests in skills.

Students also expressed how taking tests in the skills room created greater success and improved test-taking conditions for all students.

“[Taking tests in skills] helps me because it's a quiet place [where] I can actually focus and not pay attention to the time because time stresses me out, and I take three hours for a math test sometimes,” said another student.