Students in NSW will be banned from wearing smart watches in their HSC exams this year as schools and exam boards battle to keep up with new ways to cheat.
The NSW Board of Studies has this week emailed all Year 12 students with a list of items prohibited from this year's exam rooms. At the top of the list are Apple Watches, followed by iPhones , iPads and correction fluid.
Schools are also cracking down on Apple Watches, with the prestigious North Sydney boys' school Shore banning the watches from the school completely.
The headmaster of Shore, Timothy Wright, said the school had made the decision to ban Apple Watches because the devices could pose a threat to "academic integrity".
"Apple Watches are very powerful, and they could provide the opportunity for surreptitious access to information during assessments," Dr Wright said.
"Also because of their relative[ly] unobtrusive nature, there is the potential for filming, and we need to protect the privacy of our staff and fellow students."
The ban on smart watches follows revelations that NSW high school students are paying hundreds of dollars to have assignments written for them by private companies and individual tutors, with teachers struggling to rein-in an "endemic" cheating culture.
Online classified sites such as Gumtree are selling assignments and essay factories are going on hiring sprees in Chatswood, Cabramatta and Auburn.
Universities also struggle to combat cheating in exams, with a Sydney University report into academic misconduct finding that students are increasingly paying impersonators to sit their exams or smuggling in technology to help them cheat.
Multiple choice exams are particularly problematic, the report says, because as many as 5 per cent of students cheat by looking over the shoulder of others.
A new exams policy at the University of NSW says watches must be placed in a clear plastic bag and left under the student's seat before an exam starts.
"Advances in watch technologies have led to new exam rules: no wrist or handheld watches on you or your exam desk. There will be clocks visible from all points of every exam room," the policy says.
The Board of Studies has also reminded students about the risks of cheating in an exam, which includes copying from another student, taking notes or technology into exams, plagiarising and memorising and copying an essay from a website or another person.
In 2014, teachers found 350 cases of plagiarism in school assessments, and the Board of Studies discovered 21 cases of cheating in the exams.
"Students may receive zero marks for a school assessment, zero marks for an exam, potentially not receive their HSC, and live with the life-long knowledge that they did the wrong thing by themselves and their friends," the note emailed to students says.
The board will also crack down on plagiarism and ghost writing and has warned students that it will focus on "where students might be sourcing work which is not their own."
"If these activities are shown to be illegal, we will take action in each case," the note warns.
