The government are clamping down on students who get other people to write their essays
The government have announced plans to 'beat the cheats' and clamp down on students using essay writing services at university.
The Education Secretary Damian Hinds's new scheme aims to block payments to essay writing companies, while Google and YouTube are among companies removing promotional ads for such services from their sites, to prevent students being lured into cheating.
As part of the new plans, DofE are also calling on universities to crackdown on those found cheating at university, calling on institutions to consider "honour codes", which would see students sign a pledge not to use essay writing services for their own assignments.
In 2016 the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) found there are approximately 17,000 instances of academic offences per year in the UK, though the number of students using essay writing services is likely higher, due to plagiarised work going undetected.
In order to prevent such events, companies are trialling new software in an attempt to recognise cheating of this kind, and to prevent cheating from happening.
Speaking of the new project, the Education Secretary said:
"Sadly there have always been some people who opt for the easy way and the internet has seen a black market in essay writing services spring up. However, no matter how easy it is to access these services now, it doesn’t change the fact that this is cheating, and students must understand it is unacceptable.
"It is simply unethical for these companies to profit from this dishonest business which is exploiting young people and it is time to stamp them out of our world-class higher education sector.
"I am determined to beat the cheats who threaten the integrity of our system and am calling on online giants, such as PayPal, to block payments or end the advertisement of these services – it is their moral duty to do so. There has been some positive progress made by some in the tech sector but it is vital that we all unite to clamp down on this practice and the companies that are feeding on it."
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