Happy prince: Britain?s Prince Harry was cleared of cheating in his art A-level coursework

As a member of Brighton College?s religion and philosophy department, I teach ethics. As its chaplain, I preach ethics. The fact that our educational system is itself unethical makes a mockery of much of my work.

On an Internet bulletin board recently, a teacher claimed to be able to get even a ?moron? an A grade at GCSE. This was no boast; it was an admission? a confession born of deep frustration in a profession that has been ethically compromised.

The secret of the teacher?s academic success wasn?t a new educational methodology but, rather, the ?pushing? and ?managing? of pupils in their coursework? coursework that, in some subjects, constitutes two-thirds of their final GCSE grade.

?Ninety per cent of our pupils get A or A+ for their coursework,? the teacher stated. ?About 80 per cent then go on to get a GCSE A or A+. Everyone?s happy. So why do I feel like a fraud??

The reason is that teachers know all too well that they are participating in an educational practice that is itself perpetrating a fraud. Teachers, pupils and schools are deluding themselves if they consider the ?management? of coursework anything less than unethical, and yet the anecdotal evidence suggests that this is happening on a national scale.

Across the country, pupils are (often unwittingly) caught up in a ?game? of ?how far can I pull the wool over the examiners? eyes?? The problem is that the examiners themselves have set the rules of the game.

Coursework is time-consuming and the bane of many a teacher?s and pupil?s lives but if ?managed? well, it can have results. The problem is that the results do not reflect student ability, but rather institutional willingness to look the other way.

In other words, we have an unhealthy collaboration between pupil, parent and school. If myopic exam boards are happy to perpetuate the construction of coursework moral mazes, then everyone else is free to negotiate their way to academic success, even if undeserved.

So how can we change this nonsense? I would suggest there are three locations where this moral contest is most evident and needs to be addressed most urgently.

First, the home: parents completing their children?s coursework while they are away on a well-earned holiday; private tutors writing the coursework; and pupils buying essays or copying material off the Net. Stories of such abuse are common, but impossible to prove. The moral crisis in this arena is faced by the parent. At what point does well-meaning parental help, slip into unauthorised assistance? When does helping to achieve lapse into helping to cheat?

Second, the classroom. Here, it is the teacher who is in the moral hot seat, with pressure coming from above as well as below. Weighed down by the demand for academic success, some feel bound to mark pupils? coursework not just once, offering a modicum of advice and then steering their charges in the right direction. The child and teacher enter into a charade of marking, and re-submission until both are blue in the face. The final product is of a high standard, but has long lost its identity as an independent work. Such ?success? not only comes at a moral cost, but at an educational cost as well.

Third, the head?s study. The responsibility for what to do with the cancer of coursework lies with the headteacher. However, with little hard proof to support anecdotal evidence, combating its abuse is like wrestling with a ghost. Martin Stephen, high master of St Paul?s, has recently demanded the abolition of coursework because ?the Internet is a gift to plagiarism?. This may be so, but wouldn?t those who shine in extended pieces of work rather than short written exams suffer? Is there not another, less radical, solution?

Might, for instance, all homework, be banned, in favour of coursework that is conducted exclusively within the school gates? Might schools not collaborate in setting strict rules to stop teachers re-marking coursework ad nauseam? And might heads not enforce ?honour codes?, bringing parent, pupil and school together in mutual accountability and making plagiarism a serious offence?

Teaching is an honourable profession, but it is being severely compromised. And if exam boards are unwilling to grasp the ethical issues, then it is upto schools to address the slippery morality of this flawed educational innovation. To endorse the status quo is to endorse an unethical system ? one in which pupils are rewarded for what they can get away with; one in which parents, teachers, pupils and schools are tempted to cheat; and one that ultimately raises the question: ?What exactly are we teaching our pupils??

?The Daily Telegraph

FOREIGH FUNDAS

Arjun Jindal CEO, Ready to Go Magazine replies to your queries

I am a class XI science student.I want to become an international professional tennis player and play the Grand Slams. From which US tennis academy should I get trained ? What will be the annual cost of getting tennis training in the US ? What will be my altogether living cost in the US ?

Name withheld

A US tennis academy is not a pathway for a grand slam entry. However we give below a few names of US academies along with the website for you to explore. The tuition and accommodation fees would be approx US$ 32000 for an academic year (9.5 months). The list of US tennis academies is as follows:

Bolletieri Sports Academy, www.sportline.bolletieri.com

Florida Tennis Center, Delray Beach; www.floridatenniscenter.com, Harry Hopman Tennis Academy; www.saddlebrookresort.com