As a teacher I always want my students to gain the grades that their abilities deserve. It’s usually quite easy to gauge the range of levels across a class, identifying stronger and weaker students. But what happens when a weaker student suddenly produces a piece of work that any native speaker would be proud of?

This was a critical incident that occurred in my class this month. I am teaching a study skills class in which students have to produce a 3000 word report on a specific subject, often related to their majors. It’s a tough assignment, particularly for Foundation students who have just arrived in the UK.

To guide them through the process the school has devised 3 formative assessments before the final summative report is submitted – a proposal, an outline and a draft of a report section. The outline consisted of a detailed report plan section-by-section plus an analysis of a source with references, summary and paraphrase.

The student in question is a difficult case – he shows an interest in the project at times, while on other occasions seems very unprepared. His proposal was, however, one of the best in the class. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but this should have been a warning sign.

As I was going through my students’ outlines, this student’s plan was exceptional with very detailed descriptions of each section’s content and aims. The sentences could have come straight from a British university planning document. Immediately my suspicions were aroused – surely this was not his work?

In the module, we devote quite a bit of time to discussing plagiarism and the software we have to combat it. However, there were discussions among teaching staff of rumours that some students were planning to buy assignments. This is a relatively new area for me as a teacher – it is one thing to look at a Turnitin submission and check for copied sections, as I have done many times, but it is quite another to decide if a student may have got a professional to write their assignment, something which Turnitin would not pick up.

I discussed the issue with my line manager and was told that we couldn’t take formal action for a formative assignment but would have to wait for a summative submission. This would then take the form of a viva in which the student has to talk in detail about their work to check that it is theirs.

I was advised to address the matter of originality informally with the student. I did so and was in part relieved by his reaction. He said that he did indeed have a private tutor to help him with his English and admitted that some sections of the outline were sent by his tutor. We discussed the issue and I impressed upon him that having a tutor is acceptable to help with the process but that the work itself needed to be his. I also explained that we have a process of interviewing students about their work if it is deemed to be suspicious.

I will have to wait to see his next submissions to judge if he has taken onboard my warnings, but the incident gave me much cause for reflection. At what point does getting additional educational support turn into cheating? Clearly that line was not obvious to the student and I’m hoping our discussion helped to clarify this. It is a subject I plan to return to in future classes.

Update (May 2020): The student worked very hard on his project and produced a good result, not outstanding but the presence of minor grammar errors and imperfect citations in places led me to have no doubt that he was doing the work himself. I feel satisfied that I nipped a potential problem in the bud and it had a positive outcome.