What to do if a school cheats?

[elaifyanre]

Hi,

I was discussing my French ab initio oral with my teacher today. The oral consists of 3 parts, in the first part the student is supposed to be given a choice of two unseen picture (stimuli) to describe for 1~2 minutes, before the oral the student is given 15 minutes (without a dictionary) to prepare.

Then a grade 9 student (not in IB yet) said his sister in School A (The only other IB school in our area) is also taking French ab initio this year and they were allowed to choose the stimuli themselves (not choosing 1 from the 2 given, but freely choosing) and were allowed to prepare for the oral at home (so with a dictionary).

As ab initio students it's almost impossible to do the oral without flaws but it's possible if you prepared for it beforehand and just recite it when recording the response.

I've had knowledge of this sort of thing, for example, some teachers give students the IOC script (not even the text) they were supposed to say and just make the students memorize them, and then they all get perfect marks.

I'm pretty sure this is cheating.

I am (quite) hard-working but I won't say I'm getting a definite 7 in subjects like French and English (for English, 6 is already the aim) and since the IB score usually follows a normal distribution this is going to give us a great disadvantage if there are a lot of people cheating.

My French teacher is quite concerned with the fact but we probably can't do anything. I'm trying to do my best and get a good grade but this is actually going to affect our final grades.

So what should we do?

Edited January 20, 2014 by ssy

[by.andrew]

Do you have proof that they're cheating? I feel sorry for you, but unless you get the school to confess, I think this matter is currently out of your hands. (To be extremely honest, French B/ab initio is one of the easiest subjects out there, IMO; our average for French for a class of 120 students were ~6.2)

[elaifyanre]

Do you have proof that they're cheating? I feel sorry for you, but unless you get the school to confess, I think this matter is currently out of your hands. (To be extremely honest, French B/ab initio is one of the easiest subjects out there, IMO; our average for French for a class of 120 students were ~6.2)

I'm international so French ab initio is actually ab initio for me.

Proof? Just the student's words, I don't think IB will take that.

[Arrowhead]

This sort of thing isn't uncommon nor unheard of. There's nothing really that you can do other than do your best for your work and hope for the best results. Sorry, but the world is an unfair place and life sucks, all you can do is make some lemonade.

[elaifyanre]

This sort of thing isn't uncommon nor unheard of. There's nothing really that you can do other than do your best for your work and hope for the best results. Sorry, but the world is an unfair place and life sucks, all you can do is make some lemonade.

I try to do my best so that this won't matter.

[sameera95]

Well at my school, we get given the oral questions to prepare our answers and the teachers mark them. It's up to us then to learn them. I find that really long and I know I won't remember the answer to everything, so I'm just going to learn the tenses and vocab, so when the time comes I can just make up my answer there and then. We also use the questions as preparation for the oral in the classroom, my teacher gets us to work in pairs to ask each other questions and answer them. My teacher also said that SL and HL students get to choose the topics they want for the oral, so she let us choose our preferred 2 topics (there will also be a 3rd topic of her choice). But we don't go to the level that you're talking about, we're not allowed our dictionary in the oral assessment, we don't have a script from our teacher, and we won't have seen the picture before (all we know is that the picture is based on one of the 2 topics we chose). BTW, how can they have their dictionaries in the oral assessment when there's supposed to be an IB invigilator supervising them during the preparation period?

[elaifyanre]

BTW, how can they have their dictionaries in the oral assessment when there's supposed to be an IB invigilator supervising them during the preparation period?

No, they are given the stimuli before so they can just memorize what to say and recite it.

The "script from teacher" is from another school for English Lit IOC.

[twilight]

The IOC for French Ab is moderated right? If the students sound too fluent on the recording, IBO will get suspicious and ask the school to redo. It happened to my friend's school, also for a group 2 subject.

[Sandwich]

This happens in all the language subjects in certain schools. People are entered inappropriately for ab initio or B when they are fluent speakers, people are allowed to pre-select pieces for their commentaries or oral exams, or warned about topics...

The IBO sucks at invigilating things in this respect, so you just have to suck it up and deal with whatever is given to you. Unfortunately. Suppress the inner rage I used to get really angry about this, especially being able to select your extract or even the book that the extract is from for A1 World Lit... a huge part of that exam is learning a whole load of books all at once and having to very quickly recall chronological facts to place the extract. Knowing which book beforehand or alternatively even knowing the extract is a massive cheat. But it happens really quite commonly.

Bah humbug etc.