Cheating students on marketplace website offering to buy or sell work
CHEATING students are offering up to $1500 on a popular online marketplace for people to do their homework — including assignments that contribute to crucial HSC marks.
The Sydney-based Airtasker website has been flooded with young students asking people to bid to do their essays and research papers for them.
Prices for the plagiarised work range from just a few dollars by high school kids to a $1500 fee offered by one female university student asking for someone to complete her “journalism diploma course tasks”.
An investigation by The Saturday Telegraph can reveal one schoolteacher from a North Shore primary school is being investigated by the Department of Education after evidence she had “bid” to complete several assignments on behalf of students.
The teacher has made several offers to complete assignments on the site, even boasting of her job title to secure tasks.
“I am a teacher myself and have completed many of these,” she replied to someone who wanted an analysis of “how the media represents homelessness”.
Another user offered her $50 to fill out “2 observation cluster booklets”.
She replied: “I have an honours degree in early childhood education and primary teaching. I can get this done for you asap. My offer is reflective of the high quality work you will receive. My knowledge in this area is enormous.”
When contacted by The Saturday Telegraph on social media, the teacher claimed the assignments were for “my own research”.
But she later wrote: “I’ve never admitted to that account being mine. Anyone could have taken my photo from Facebook.”
The principal of the school declined to comment. The Education Department said it was “making inquiries into the allegations”.
On Airtasker this week one student posted: “I need a primary school teacher to help with an assignment due Sunday.” The user was offering $15.
Another student posted how they were willing to offer $42 for anyone willing to do a 1000-word speech on “Multiculturalism in Australian Schools”.
A boy called Joseph from southwest Sydney uploaded a photo of his Year 12 assessment task for Sport, Lifestyle and Recreation Studies.
“Assignment to be done in the topic of Boxing,” he said.
“No Plagiarism * will be checked.”
In another advertisement described by educators as an HSC assessable task someone urgently requested “1500 words on evaluating the effectiveness of the law in responding to technological changes in relation to drones”.
The female student claimed the task — which she offered to pay $35 for someone to complete — was for her personal interest. However, she stipulated the information be completed in “an essay format”.
“Please include bibliography to verify information/sources,” she said.
“The listed price is entirely negotiable. Disclaimer, the piece is for personal study. It’s non-academic in that it won’t be subjected to any official grading or submitted to anything.”
Australian Tutoring Association president Mohan Dhall said the homework black market was “commerce gone rogue”.
“If Airtasker allow people to outsource tasks to unknown people, it is behaviour that is hard to track, and is of unknown quantity, we don’t know how widespread it is,” he said.
“It is very hard to measure, but it is not all that hard to stop. You can stop it by making a student provide evidence of planning before a task and having cleverly designed assessment tasks.”
A spokesman for the NSW Education Standards Authority said “cheating in any form is unacceptable”.
“The penalties for breaches include losing all or part of the marks for an assessment, examination, cancellation of a course and possible loss of the HSC,” he said.
In a statement, Airtasker chief executive Tim Fung said the site had an automatic detection device which aimed to pick up tasks that ask users to cheat.
However, he conceded it “can often be difficult to distinguish between tutoring/proofreading and cheating”.
THIEVES WILL BE HOME AND HOSED
NSW schools are forcing students to complete a mandatory anti-plagiarism program as teachers warn of a new and evolving world of online homework piracy.
Part of the scheme warns kids they could be risking an entire year’s worth of work by cheating once — especially during their HSC period.
St Clair High School principal Chris Presland — also the president of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council — told The Saturday Telegraph that teachers were well aware of booming homework-for-cash online scams.
Mr Presland said the mandatory All My Own Work program warned students of the “dangers of plagiarism, what constitutes it and the impact it can have”.
“Some schools do this during the latter part of Year 10 and others in Year 11 and the messages are reinforced regularly,” he said.
“Every assessment task the students do has a covering letter outlining what is expected.”
Parents support groups around the state last night expressed their concern that students were using the popular AirTasker online market to cheat.
“At the end of the day, the risk is always for plagiarism and for students to buy an education, and buy their way through,” Central Coast Council of P & C Associations president Sharryn Brownlee said.
