FOI_25-037 Cases of academic misconduct
Date of response: 07 February 2025
We have now considered your request of 06 February 2025 for the following information:
Question 1. How many cases of students cheating/academic misconduct has there been in this academic year (24/25) so far
Question 2. How many cases of students cheating/academic misconduct was there last academic year (23/24)
Question 3. How many cases of students cheating/academic misconduct has there been in the past five years?
Please break down and specify the different categories of cheating/misconduct and how you have discovered this information.
Clarification received 06 February 2025:
I am happy to receive the figures for formal investigations into Academic Misconduct are recorded by our Learning and Teaching Service (LTS), and therefore we can guarantee we can respond to your request, based on records held by LTS, for undergraduate students who faced formal investigation after being suspected of breaching regulations 15,18 or 20.
Our response:
The following figures are the number of cases of undergraduate and postgraduate taught students who were formally investigated for breaching General Regulations for Students –specifically regulation 18 ‘Plagiarism and Collusion’. We have not included cases where plagiarism or collusion was suspected, but investigations proved no misconduct occurred, nor have we included any exam misconduct handled by AQO, for cases where misconduct is suspected during the exam itself (i.e. use of notes or electronic devices).
| Academic Year (October to September) | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plagiarism | 117 | 134 | 180 | 196 | 239 |
| Plagiarism and Collusion | 5 | 5 | 6 | <5 | 12 |
| Collusion | 29 | 56 | 52 | 61 | 95 |
| Contract cheating (including Artificial Intelligence) | <5 | <5 | <5 | <5 | 69 |
| Fraud | <5 | <5 | <5 | <5 | <5 |
In the majority of the cases reflected in the statistics above, these will have been identified by academics when marking assignments. Those markers will have referred each case to the School’s Plagiarism & Collusion (P&C) Officer who will have reviewed the case and determined whether an investigative meeting is required. Markers and P&C Officers can use several tools to indicate potential misconduct: primarily text-matching software for Turnitin submissions. However, there are also some instances where a report of cheating can be made by another student or a member of the public, and these would be investigated in the same way.
Values fewer than five <5
On this occasion, it is not possible to provide all the requested information. The Act contains several exemptions that allow public authorities to withhold certain information from release. We have applied the following exemption to part of your request.
| Exemption | Reason |
|---|---|
| s.40(2), Personal information | Disclosure of some of the requested information would be contrary to the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation |
We can confirm that the University does hold this data. However, due to the small numbers involved, we consider these details are exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the FOI Act.
Due to the small numbers involved, it would be possible to identify a living individual(s) from this information and, therefore, we would consider it to be personal data. Disclosure of this personal data would contravene the first data protection principle of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that being Principle (a) – lawfulness, fairness, and transparency. We consider that disclosure would constitute unfair processing of the data as any individual would reasonably expect for their data to remain confidential and not released to the public. The University is only permitted to disclose personal data if to do so would be fair, lawful, and transparent. Therefore, the requirements of this exemption are met, and we are unable to disclose this information.
To ensure that we do not inadvertently release personal data in this response or in combination with other publicly available data, we have replaced all values between 0 and 4 in relation to the number of individuals with the value ‘<5’.