Academic Honesty

Honesty is our ethos…

Our school maintains a high standard of academic excellence and achievement by our students. Effort and honesty are the cornerstones of the school’s ethos and are fiercely protected with the following policies;

Academic honesty policy

This policy applies to all examinations and year groups in the BSN Senior School. Academic honesty and its attendant study habits and skills should be cultivated from an early age. The following is an extract from Academic Honesty: a Guidance for Schools, 2003, IBO.

All students

‘….must understand the basic meaning and significance of concepts that relate to academic honesty, especially authenticity and intellectual property.

‘Ensuring that candidates understand and respect academic honesty should not be confined to original authorship and ownership of creative material: academic honesty includes, for example, proper conduct in relation to the written examinations.

‘In reality, it is probably easier to explain what is academic dishonesty, with direct reference to plagiarism, collusion and cheating in examinations. However, whenever possible the topic should be treated in a positive way, stressing the benefits of properly conducted academic research and a respect for the integrity of all forms of assessment…’

This is preferable to simply warning students that various forms of academic cheating are unacceptable and liable to result in a penalty.

Authenticity and respect

In order to be an authentic piece of work it should be based on the candidate’s ideas. Where the work of others is used, the sources should be fully acknowledged.

Where sections are reproduced from the work of another source and are quoted verbatim, the words should be enclosed by quotation marks. It is also important to respect intellectual or creative property and to be aware that this property is usually protected by law.

The use of works of art – film, dance, painting, music and so on – are also subject to the same restrictions where this might involve the passing off of the work of other artists as a student’s own.

Defining academic dishonesty and malpractice

Plagiarism: where the work or ideas of others are presented as a student’s own.

Collusion: where dishonesty is supported by another student who allows their work to be copied and submitted for assessment. This should embrace direct help from adults outside the BSN – parents, other relations or outside tutors.

Duplication of work: where work produced for one component or subject is deliberately submitted for another.

Other forms of misconduct: defined as actions which might confer an unfair advantage on a student: stealing or gaining access to examination material in advance; unacceptable conduct during an examination or supervised assessment; making false declarations about a piece of work being their own; collusion with staff or other adults to gain an unfair advantage; impersonating another student.

Plagiarism takes many forms and should be recognised by students and supervising staff as such – examples of plagiarism include:

● Downloading a free research paper ● Copying an article from a website ● Buying a paper from a commercial website ● Using work submitted by students in previous years ● Translating a foreign web article or a printed piece into English ● Cutting and pasting sections of other people’s work to create an extended piece without proper acknowledgement ● Changing some words by copying whole sections or sentences without acknowledgement ● Paraphrasing or summarising without attribution ● Making up a quotation, or inventing false data

If a breach of academic honesty at the BSN is proven, it will always result, at examination level, in:

● Parents being informed ● A mark of zero ● That piece of work will not be submitted for either internal or external assessment ● Parents, staff and students being informed ● A report being sent to the examining authority where this is required In a case outside examination regulations (eg; mock or internal exam/assessment), the teacher has the discretion to:

● Award a mark of zero and not mark the piece of work

Or:

● Request that the work be redone in an academically-honest way

The British School in The Netherlands (Official)

BSNetherlands

@BSN_SSL @BSNetherlands Senior School Leidschenveen Vrouw Avenweg 422 2493 WX Den Haag Telephone: 070 218 3023 Email: senior.leidschenveen@britishschool.nl www.britishschool.nl