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Press Articles About Our Service

Ever since we launched the first dedicated UK custom essays and dissertations website in April 2003, our experts have consistently helped our clients improve their grades.

Degree Essays UK has been featured in numerous press stories, both in national and international newspapers. The quality of our service is well documented - not only has the owner spoken at length about the Company on BBC radio, but we have been featured in countless newspapers, both national and regional.

We should point out at this stage that the newspapers below are in no way affiliated with or give any personal endorsement of our service! Having said that, we think you'll find that we don't need it. The newspapers serve a purpose - they show that we are not only a genuine, UK based company but that our essays and dissertations meet the quality standards that we publish.

We've been covered in national press

You will appreciate however that there are many organisations that disapprove of our service, since they are adamant that all students are dishonest and will use us to cheat. This is, unfortunately, reflected in the comprehensive collection of articles we have presented below. We have reproduced them, regardless of the criticism they contain, as an aid for potential customers to appreciate the authenticity of our business; we believe this is extremely important as there are so many bogus essay and dissertation sites on the web. However, please be aware that there is a proper use for our service - although written as custom research pieces for you, our essays should be used as a basis for producing your own work. Just as you would not reproduce a book or journal which happened to exactly address your question, you should not hand in our essays as your own. We stress this time and time again but it is a point that the press fail to appreciate - we do not condone plagiarism.

If you work or write for a student paper, or the local/national press and would like to interview a representative of the company, we would be more than happy to arrange an interview with you.

List of older news coverage for the Academic Answers Group:

October 17, 2006 : The Guardian - Education: The unbearable triteness of cheating
October 6, 2006 : Planning (Haymarket Publishing Services) - Studying under anaesthetic
September 17, 2006 : The Sunday Times - Don't be a Magpie
August 31, 2006 : This is Oxfordshire - Students snap up web essays (repeat of story from August 3rd)
August 31, 2006 : This is Oxfordshire - Oxford students among 'worst culprits' for buying essays (repeat of story from August 3rd)
August 18, 2006 : The Times Educational Supplement - Will firms who flog essays help to tackle the cheats?
August 7, 2006 : Nottingham Evening Post - Selling of essays just condones cheating
August 4, 2006 : Guardian Weekly - Guardian Weekly: UK News: Week in Britain
August 4, 2006 : The Times Educational Supplement - Burden of supervising all coursework to fall on staff
August 4, 2006 : The Times Higher Education Supplement - High-flyers, lowdown cheats?
August 3, 2006 : Nottingham Evening Post - Degree cheats hard to detect
August 3, 2006 : This is Oxfordshire - Students snap up web essays
August 3, 2006 : This is Oxfordshire - Oxford students among 'worst culprits' for buying essays
August 2, 2006 : Indo-Asian News Service - Online 'plagiarism' threatens quality of British degrees
August 2, 2006 : Nottingham Evening Post - Essays for cash 'not cheating'
August 2, 2006 : Nottingham Evening Post - Essay website's warning
August 1, 2006 : The Guardian - Reply Letters and emails: Varying degrees of plagiarism - Dr Paul Flewers
August 1, 2006 : The Guardian - Reply Letters and emails: Varying degrees of plagiarism - Michael Collins
August 1, 2006 : The Guardian - GCSE coursework to be curtailed to stop internet cheats
July 31, 2006 : The Guardian - Reply Letters and emails: Septic Yanks
July 29, 2006 : The Guardian - Universities call summit to combat plagiarism: Industry estimated to be worth £200m a year
November 27, 2005 : The Observer - Log on for easy learning: While the government gets exercised about education, others know the answer is just a click away
August 4, 2005 : Western Mail - They've Sold Their Academic Integrity for a few quid
April 8, 2005 : The Times Higher Education Supplement - Bought Essays Fail To Hit The Mark
January 28, 2005 : The Times Higher Education Supplement - Nip Double Trouble In The Bud
June 20, 2004 : The Observer - Universities go to war on exam cheats
April 7, 2004 : Western Daily Press - Cheaters' charter for students and pupils
March 28, 2004 : Sunday Telegraph - A-level students offered pounds 200 essays 'guaranteed to gain them an A-grade'
January 2, 2004 : The Independent - Parents and Internet Help Middle Class Pupils Cheat Exams
January 2, 2004 : The Independent - How The Web Comes to The Rescue

If you know of an article which features or mentions our company that is not listed here, please let us know!

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October 17, 2006 Tuesday SECTION: GUARDIAN EDUCATION PAGES; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 682 words HEADLINE: Education: The unbearable triteness of cheating: Comment

BYLINE: Boris Johnson

BODY: Yes, OK, I have cheated. I admit it. It was only once, I was about 15, and I justified it to my conscience on the grounds that the wheeze was simply brilliant. I was asked to translate a piece of English prose into Latin, and it happened that the passage was from Plutarch who wrote - as every Education Guardian reader knows - in Greek. Suddenly I had an idea. There was an old and largely deserted school library, full of calfskin volumes of prodigious antiquity.

I was certain that mouldering somewhere would be a translation of Plutarch from Greek into Latin. It would be a beautiful thing, lovingly inscribed and illuminated, and so completely irrelevant that no one would even have opened it for about 300 years.

In a fever of excitement, I started fantasising about that monkish feat of scholarship, and the gorgeous Latin with which the translator would have rendered Plutarch: so concise, so pungent, so euphonious. And it would be mine! I could see the pipe of my teacher, the great Mr Hammond, falling from his lips as he beheld the fluency of my constructions.

So after rugby I stole into the library and, together with my friend Garrood, I started scouring the thousands of gold-chased spines. I could see the librarian watching us with mounting suspicion. And then, blow me down, there it was! Plutarch in Latin, exactly as I had predicted. Snorting with laughter, we transcribed it, and handed it in.

I will never forget my disbelief when we got our marks. The flaming monk had obviously been nodding over his scriptorium. Beta/alpha was the verdict, and Mr Hammond's view of the monk's efforts was that "apart from the obvious howlers, much of this runs very nicely".

Howlers, eh! Well, Mr Monk, I said to myself, than you very much. I don't know what things must have been com ing to in the Middle Ages, when your average monk couldn't even translate Plutarch. I found the whole thing so laborious, so depressing and so counter-productive that I never once tried cheating again.

It's not just the terror of being found out. The reason most of us don't cheat in our academic work is that you feel so dissatisfied. You are not just cheating your teachers and the rest of your class and your future employers. You are cheating yourself. You haven't really assembled the work, you don't understand how it fits together, and you lack the pride and interest of real authorship.

For generations that has been one of the key disincentives to cheating - that, and the fear of exposure. The trouble is that cheating is no longer as laborious as it was 25 years ago, and the cheats are much less easy to spot. I have just been looking at a cheat's website called UKEssays, and its sheer efficiency makes me feel queasy. Never mind some long-dead monk; UKEssays will supply you with a tailor-made essay, at £500 a pop, on any subject you are set, and teams of essay-writing graduates can calibrate their output to provide you with material worth a 2.1 or, if you are feeling really brazen, a first. According to some estimates, 10% of university students are engaged in some kind of cheating. If you consider that the difference between a 2.1 and a 2.2 can be thousands of pounds on your starting salary, the incentives are obvious.

Lecturers and tutors can hardly be expected to know all their students properly, let alone their prose styles. What can we do? The first thing is to remember that this is not a victimless crime: your steroid-enhanced performance is making some honest toiler look worse. That is why academics must be encouraged to crack down. They should have every right to interrogate students about the originality of their work, irrespective of whether plagiarism has been detected by software.

And if all else fails, there is still one way the institution can beat the cheat. Flush out their pockets. Confiscate their Blackberries. Then make them sit for three hours in an exam hall. There's no Plutarch there.

Boris Johnson is shadow higher education minister. He is speaking today at a Universities UK conference, Tackling Plagiarism, Collusion and Cheating in Higher Education

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LENGTH:1180 words
HEADLINE:Studying under anaesthetic
BODY:

Following the recent trend for university students to outsource coursework, a planning-shaped gap in the essay market has been identified by Cliff Hague.

Welcome to Planning Without Pain (PWP), a special service exclusively for planning students. There has never been an internet service dedicated to meeting their need for essays on demand.

Many student planners have to waste valuable time writing their own essays.

Have you tried putting 'sustainable communities' into the search engine of one of our competitors? They are likely to offer you six pages about sustainable development at Shell Oil or papers in American English about nutty religious cults living as communities.

Beware. These will not get you more than a bare pass mark. If a diligent postgraduate student is doing the marking - many markers nowadays are research students - you might even fail, despite the snazzy title page and free list of references that came with the essay.

Why can your pals studying business, law or other common subjects buy their essays so cheaply on the web but you have to pay through the nose to get a special writer to do yours for you? Our own economics essay on supply and demand tells you. There are not enough planning students to make it worthwhile for the big companies to stack planning essays high on their electronic shelves. You are a niche market, and that is where PWP can help. We are the only specialist provider of essays, coursework and dissertations for planning courses.

At PWP we value our customers and we are proud to offer you exceptional service. Our planning essay search engine lets you access more than 3,000 essays from 'What is a development plan?' to obscure waffle about planning theory that will even bamboozle your tutor. Our essay seeker lets you search by keyword or subject. This is a great help if you are in a last minute panic, and what planner isn't?

Essay delivery by e-mail or fax is guaranteed two hours before your deadline, so there is no need to fret trying to read it over. You party, we do your work. We offer quality and value for money. Our writers include former professors, but our prices are still competitive with mainstream providers such as Degree Essays UK.

Here are some testimonials from satisfied customers: 'Many thanks for the piece you wrote for me on climate change and the need to protect the environment. It went down a treat. I will definitely use you again.' Dave, Kensington.

'I was so involved with my girlfriend that I just could not get my head round how the English local government system works. PWP saved me. I lost the girl, but I still finished up with a good job. Thanks for everything.' John, Hull.

'As a busy mum with four youngsters and a full-time job to hold down, I just do not have the time to learn about planning as well. Your writers are the best I have encountered. They are really professional. Bless.' Ruth, Bolton.

Coursework is important on a planning course. But it can often end in tears, especially if you have to work in a group. Let PWP take the strain.

We can do your input to a group project for you. Better still, check out our great deals for groups of five or more.

Whatever you need - masterplans, community participation strategies, sustainable rural tourism ideas, brownfield site regeneration or even a development control exercise - our team of professionals will do it for you. Why let ignorance or idleness stop you getting the professional qualification and good job that you have paid for with your tuition fees?

Student life is full of emergencies that take up so much time. The car breaks down. Someone you know back home is having a stag or hen party.

The pizza parlour asks you to work overtime because somebody is off sick.

There are no Pot Noodles left in the flat and it is your turn to do the shopping. Your girlfriend or boyfriend is having a mega-sulk because you overfed the goldfish and it died.

You have arranged to spend the summer in Ibiza but your tutor says that you will have to come back to resit exams in August. They charge fees, but universities have still not learned how to be customer-friendly. We are different. For our fees, which can be as low as pounds 9 a page, we guarantee you the grades you want.

We understand our customers, so we know that not everyone wants to get good marks. Many lads fear that they will be shunned if they betray signs of ability. What good are straight As if they make you a Norman no-mates?

That is why PWP lets you choose the grade of essay you want. Our 'normal 2:1' is our best seller, but the 'cool loafer/just about a 2.2' is increasingly popular. Executive club members can purchase from our first-class or masters with distinction catalogue.

Exclusively to readers of Planning, here is a sample of what we offer.

The essay question is: 'Planning is often accused of imposing costs that undermine business competitiveness. How might planning be reformed to tackle this weakness without sacrificing the other benefits that it brings?' Here is the opening of our 'brainbuster' first-class essay:

'There is an irony in the Treasury's angst-ridden perception that the English planning system is undermining competitiveness in an age of increasing globalisation. The heavy briefing that accompanied the publication of the interim report of the review of land-use planning (Barker, 2006) cranked out Whitehall's stale, parochial recipes of the past 25 years about speed, efficiency and flexibility.

This essay will acknowledge and critically address these purported remedies, before turning to analyse what can be learned from the way that planning instruments and policies operate in the economic heartlands of a major global competitor, the USA.

An institutionalist analysis will be employed to unpick 'mental models' and 'organisational forms' (see Jenkins and Smith, 2001) from the diverse experiences of regulation practices revealed by the survey of the 50 largest US metropolitan areas by Pendall, Puentes and Martin (2006) for the Brookings Institute.

Developing from this catalytic fusion of theory and evidence, the case will be made that a further dose of statutory reform carries a double inevitability - it will be attempted and it will fail. Instead, decentralisation and innovation is advocated in city-regions through experiments with US approaches such as growth management and infrastructure regulation.'

Alternatively, the 'cool loafer' version starts like this: 'Since it emerged way back in the mists of time, planning has been accused of imposing costs that undermine businesses competitiveness. The question is how might it be reformed? Being as how this complaint has been around a long time and clever people like Lord Treasury - who was called Gordon Brown before he became Lord Treasury, although some still call him Gordon Brown - do not know what to do about it, it is not going to be easy to come up with an answer, is it? Who knows how it might be reformed? Only time will tell.'

The first 100 customers will each receive a free 'I don't need no brain, I'm Planning Without Pain' baseball cap.

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Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Limited - All Rights Reserved
Sunday Times (London) September 17, 2006, Sunday
SECTION: FEATURES; Sunday Times University Survival Guide; Pg. 10 LENGTH: 424 words

HEADLINE: Don't be a magpie

BYLINE: Roger Waite

BODY:PLAGIARISM IS ON THE RISE BUT ROGER WAITE FINDS THAT TUTORS NOW HAVE WAYS OF OUTSMARTING THE CHEATS

You might call it research, but your tutors consider it cheating. Students who cut and paste ideas or, indeed, whole essays from the internet are being dealt with severely. Some culprits could even face expulsion.

A third of university students admit they have cheated by lifting ideas from books or the internet, said a recent survey for the Times Higher Education Supplement. One in ten said they had searched online for essay material.

Academics are becoming concerned at the burgeoning cut-and-paste culture and are determined to stamp it out. Many universities have adopted anti-plagiarism software, such as Turnitin, which trawls through billions of websites looking for similarities in language between a student's work and existing data online.

And now, the vice-chancellors organisation, Universities UK, is to hold a conference in London next month to discuss plagiarism. "We fear that what we see now is probably the tip of the iceberg and that most plagiarism is not being detected," says Brian Salter, academic registrar of King's College, London.

Leading academics say that many students are not even aware they are guilty of intellectual theft. Some universities now hold classes in study skills and ask students to submit coursework with a signed declaration that the material is original. Middlesex University takes a robust line: students caught plagiarising are asked to pay a £ 190 fine and resubmit the work.

At some universities, students are encouraged to use anti-plagiarism software on their own work as a way of raising awareness. Others are shifting the method of assessment, using more multiple-choice papers rather than relying on essays alone.

"Institutions do need to set out exactly what they mean by plagiarism and they have to make sure students are aware of it," Salter says.

The latest challenge for universities is the custom-written essay. Students with £ 180 to spare can order a 1,500-word, 2:1-standard essay from websites such as Ukessays and Academicdb.com.

Tutors are growing wise to this ruse too, looking for changes in writing style or dramatic improvements in grades. Jude Carroll, deputy director of the Centre for Excellence in Academia at Oxford Brookes, says: "If a custom written essay is suspected we can bring in the student to discuss it. We might ask them how they got hold of sources or ask them to read to page four of the essay. Often they read it as if they have never encountered it before."

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UK Newsquest Regional Press - This is Oxfordshire
August 31, 2006 Thursday
SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 388 words
HEADLINE: Students snap up web essays
DATELINE: Oxford Mail
BODY: University students in Oxford are paying hundreds of pounds for specially-tailored essays bought off the Internet. Up to 70 Oxford undergraduates a day visit the website of a firm which offers help with coursework.

Students pay ukessays.com £240 for a bespoke 2,000 word-essay which is "guaranteed a 2:1" and is delivered in five days, or £1,200 for a 10,000-word dissertation delivered within ten days.

Ukessays.com is just one of more than a hundred companies to offer such a service. It has a team of 3,500 writers who have supplied more than 15,000 people with tailor-made essays since 2003.

The firm's owner, Barclay Littlewood, saw his company record a £1.6m turnover last year.

He says he makes between four to ten sales in Oxford a week "during busy times".

Mr Littlewood said: "Oxford University provides us with the third highest number of online visitors of any university in England.

"We get between 65 and 70 (website) visitors a day from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes."

Mr Littlewood said the essays should only be used as a "starting point" and a "source" to develop ideas.

He said his firm would not supply essays to any students who it believed were planning to pass the work off as their own.

Jude Carroll, deputy director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oxford Brookes, confirmed essays bought from websites have been handed in by students.

She said: "It's very common everywhere and why would Oxford Brookes be any different? We are ahead of the game at Brookes, for the last six years we have been developing world leading systems to detect plagairism. Everybody is taking it very seriously."

But an Oxford University spokeswoman said: "Just because students look on the website does not mean they are buying the essays. Out of all UK universities, Oxford University will have the lowest incidents of plagarism, because of the assessment tutorial system.

"Students have to produce essays once a week for their tutorials but these essays are not assessed, they are to facilitate learning. Undergraduates are assessed mainly through exams, not coursework. If a student did cheat and pay for an essay it would be obvious."

The Commons Education Select Committee has announced an investigation into the £200m online industry amid fears of plagiarism and cheating.

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UK Newsquest Regional Press - This is Oxfordshire
August 31, 2006 Thursday SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 343 words
HEADLINE: Oxford students among 'worst culprits' for buying essays
DATELINE: The Oxford Times
BODY: UNIVERSITY students in Oxford are among the most frequent visitors to a website selling specially-tailored essays. Up to 70 undergraduates in the city every day are visiting the website of a firm which offers a leg-up with coursework.

Students are paying internet firm ukessays.com £240 for a bespoke 2,000-word essay which is "guaranteed a 2:1" and delivered in five days, or £1,200 for a 10,000-word dissertation delivered within ten days.

Ukessays.com, which is just one of more than a hundred companies to offer such a service, has a team of 3,500 writers who have supplied more than 15,000 people with tailor-made essays since the business began in 2003.

The firm's owner, Barclay Littlewood, estimates that his company can make between four and ten sales in Oxford each week "during busy times".

Mr Littlewood said: "Oxford University provides us with the third highest number of online visitors of any university in England.

"I would say we get between 65 and 70 visitors (to the website) a day from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes."

An Oxford University spokesman denied plagiarism was a problem at the university.

She said: "Just because students look on the website does not mean they are buying the essays. Out of all the universities in the UK, Oxford University will have the lowest incidents of plagiarism, because of the assessment tutorial system.

"Students have to produce essays once a week for their tutorials but these essays are not assessed, they are to facilitate learning. Undergraduates are assessed mainly through exams, not coursework.

"And if a student did cheat and pay for an essay it would be obvious as they have to discuss the ideas in the essay during the tutorial.

"Our tutors are trained to spot plagiarism and it will not be tolerated."

Jude Carroll, deputy director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oxford Brookes University, said essays bought from websites had been handed in by students.

Cambridge University students were the most frequent visitors to the Ukessays.com website.

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SECTION: A-LEVELS; News; Pg. 6 No. 4699
LENGTH: 415 words
HEADLINE:Will firms who flog essays help to tackle the cheats?
BYLINE: Warwick Mansell
BODY:

Exam boards this week issued a "put up or shut up" challenge to companies that make a fortune out of allegedly helping pupils to cheat at coursework.

The firms insist that they do not aim to help cheats when they offer GCSE, A-level and university assignments for sale over the web. Now the boards want the firms to make cheating using the essays they sell impossible - by handing over copies. These can then be fed into a computer database to allow any plagiarism to be detected.

Barclay Littlewood, owner of the most prominent essay sales website, said his firm was considering the move and that he has been calling for years for more regulation of the burgeoning industry.

Thousands of students are obtaining coursework from sites, that either offer assignments already submitted by other students, or "bespoke" pieces written to order by graduates. Companies such as Mr Littlewood's, however, insist that the coursework is offered merely to help students with their studies and that it should never be submitted by them for exam grading.

Ellie Johnson Searle, chief executive of the Joint Council for Qualifications, the boards' umbrella body, said: "This is all about ensuring the integrity of GCSEs and A-levels. We are looking at persuading the people running these sites to give us the essays, if they are so confident that the coursework they offer is not going to be submitted (for a grade).

"We can then put them into Turnitin (an anti-cheating database) to check against plagiarism."

Ms Johnson Searle said that if the companies were genuine in their claims, they should have no problem with co-operating.

The JCQ has not yet held talks with the firms. But Mr Littlewood, who runs ukessays.com, said that he would take the challenge seriously. He said:

"That's the sort of solution that we should be looking at."

He said universities should consider the same move. However, he also wants universities to respond by stopping advising students to avoid sites such as his.

The JCQ has also written to eBay, the online auction provider, to urge it to take GCSE and A-level essays off its site. Managers at eBay are still considering how to respond.

The TES revealed last year how essays and scientific investigations have been on sale on eBay for as little as 99p each. This week, a selection of assignments were on offer.

Plagiarism concerns partly explain the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority's proposal to replace coursework in many subjects with supervised in-class tests within years.

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SECTION: Pg. 14
LENGTH: 462 words
HEADLINE: Selling of essays just condones cheating
BODY:

At the age of 27 and claiming an undergraduate degree in law, as well as bar exams (barrister), Barclay Littlewood attempts to justify the purchase of formative and summative assessments in higher education on free market logic.

He claims "3,500 qualified writers" to be undertaking this work. Who and where are these people? Probably Master's students in search of funds.

I am prepared to vouch that every academic I know has nothing to do with this enterprise. The majority hold doctorates, are published in international scientific journals and act as gate-keepers of the extremely high standards of higher educational achievement.

As an academic in a respected and very tough local university (in terms of recruitment, retention and outcomes), may I reassure the public that this kind of material is nearly always detected. We use student profiles across entire degree programmes as just one means of ensuring the integrity of our students' work; rogue marks at either end of the classification system are liable to be discounted.

In addition, how can a service such as that reported, "guarantee" First or 2:1 grades? It doesn't work this simplistically. A first class piece of work not only distinguishes the student (above the mark of 70% for undergraduates) but it also addresses the subtleties that the subject-specialist and often research active lecturer is attempting to inculcate.

There are always surprises in student performances; some raise eyebrows and are investigated. Paid-for-papers are often detectable for this reason. The professional pain for my colleagues and I, in higher education institutions up and down the UK, is that once suspicions are roused, it affects the way you assess every student: the assumption becomes "cheat" as opposed to "student".

It was reassuring to learn from your report of the University of Nottingham's student of politics who has considered, but wisely refrained, from acquiescing in such charades.

In a nutshell, this so-called "service" condones cheating and belittles genuine learning and achievement. Nothing less.

There is a grey area in being a bona fide student. This is part and parcel of the experience. Uncertainty, not knowing if work is up to scratch, is a key component in developing critical awareness - a core requirement of all higher education programmes in this nation.

Moreover, a "fail" is not necessarily a negative outcome. Indeed, I could recount numerous examples of "failures" moving on to pastures new or simply trying harder (usually with success).

Universities are currently plagued with plagiarism. It represents a serious blight on our children and the highly qualified professionals who deliver their education.

Dr PETER SAMUEL Lecturer University of Nottingham Business School Howbeck Road Arnold

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Copyright 2006 Guardian Newspapers Limited
All Rights Reserved
The Guardian (London) - Final Edition
August 4, 2006 Friday

SECTION: GUARDIAN WEEKLY; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 858 words
HEADLINE:Guardian Weekly: UK News: Week in Britain
BYLINE: Derek Brown
BODY:

MPs study essay industry

It used to be called cheating, but now it's a lucrative industry worth an estimated £220m a year. That is what it costs students to buy their university essays from online suppliers such as

ukessays.com, which commissions specialist writers to turn out papers complete with references and bibliographies.

Barclay Littlewood, head of the company that turns over £1.6m a year, sees nothing wrong with multiple plagiarism. "I don't see what students are getting from wading through lots of research," he says. MPs on the education select committee, however, announced that they would investigate the issue in the autumn.

(NB: We have shortened this article because it is a round up of the news for the week and everything else in the article is unrelated to this company).

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SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 9 No. 4697
LENGTH: 383 words
HEADLINE: Burden of supervising all coursework to fall on staff
BYLINE: Michael Shaw
BODY: Plans to stop pupils taking home coursework could create extra work for teachers, unions have warned. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority wants most coursework to be completed under controlled classroom conditions to prevent plagiarism and stop parents giving excessive help.

Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that schools might have to set up special homework clubs or introduce extra lessons so pupils could complete their coursework under supervision. The NUT and the NASUWT said they would fight any moves by headteachers which allowed this to increase teachers' workload.

Mr Sinnott also said that he was saddened by the move. He said: "Coursework was introduced to increase the breadth in subjects and get pupils used to working on their own at home, preparing them for times when they will have responsibilities which cannot be dealt with just by working from nine until four."

The plan was revealed in a letter sent in March by Ken Boston, QCA chief executive, to Ruth Kelly, then Education Secretary, discussing proposals to revamp coursework which will be finalised in the autumn. He argued it would "improve authenticity and fairness" to increase the amount of coursework done in controlled conditions.

"We recognise that the practice of students carrying out coursework at home and the wide availability of the internet have created greater opportunities for malpractice," he said.

Allowing pupils to do more coursework in school could even reduce the burden on them, Dr Boston said, because "they would normally take less time to complete their task under controlled conditions than otherwise".

Mr Boston suggested scrapping GCSE maths coursework, but stressed he did not want to cut coursework for most subjects.

MPs on the Commons education select committee have announced they will hold an investigation into coursework cheating this autumn following reports in the Guardian this week by Barclay Littlewood, owner of ukessays.com, that he made £ 1.6 million a year, including £ 90,000 in one week in May, by selling essays for £ 400 each.

The DfES said that the QCA's recommendations were likely to be adopted. A spokesman said that, in future, coursework will "only be used where it is the most valid way of assessing subject-specific skills".

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Copyright 2006 TSL Education Limited - All Rights Reserved
The Times Higher Education Supplement
August 4, 2006

SECTION: PEEP'S DIARY; Pg. 13 No. 1754
LENGTH: 60 words
HEADLINE:High-flyers, lowdown cheats?
BODY:

The boss of a cash-for-essays company claims that Cambridge University students are his best customers.

Barclay Littlewood, the 28-year-old head of ukessays.com, uses university notice boards to make up to £ 90,000 a week for essays written to order.

He says that students from Oxford, Manchester, Warwick and Leeds uni-versities have also been drawn to the site.

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Copyright 2006 Nottingham Evening Post - All Rights Reserved
Nottingham Evening Post
August 3, 2006 Thursday

SECTION: Pg. 19
LENGTH: 581 words
HEADLINE: 'Degree cheats hard to detect'
BYLINE: Angelina Lambourn Education Correspondent
BODY: A City academic has warned the practice of selling tailor-made essays on the web could make it virtually impossible to identify degree cheats.

Mac Daly, president of the University and College Union at the University of Nottingham, criticised websites such as Notts-run ukessays.com where students can order essays and dissertations online.

Dr Daly, a lecturer in critical theory and cultural studies, said his university paid to use websites aimed at detecting plagiarised work.

But such sites, which list hundreds of existing essays against which markers can check their students' work, would be powerless in identifying so-called bespoke essays written solely for individual students.

Dr Daly said: "That is not detectable as somebody else's work. To detect plagiarism you must be able to detect the source. This is going to be much more difficult for institutions to police."

He warned it was conceivable a student could pay for a degree through submitting customised essays.

For example, even if a candidate performed badly in final exams, it would be difficult to prove he or she had plagiarised coursework.

But the cost of bespoke essays, which start at £120 for a 1,000-word undergraduate essay, would put many potential cheats off, said Dr Daly.

"A couple of essays which are well-marked can push up a degree grade so you would get a higher degree," he said.

"In that sense, it would devalue everything.

"But in these cases the prices would be so prohibitive I don't see how many students would be able to afford it, especially as most students are funded by their parents."

But another Nottingham expert on plagiarism was confident even students using tailor-made essays would eventually be rumbled.

Professor Jean Underwood from Nottingham Trent University, a Government adviser on combating plagiarism, said: "The most difficult thing to track is individualised, bespoke essays which cost a lot of money.

"But once you have done a brilliant essay and it's gone through, if I was writing essays to make money and a similar question came up again, I might write a similar essay.

"An essay one student might use may then also be sold to another student at another university, so it could eventually get picked up."

Prof Underwood said it was up to degree tutors to come up with ways of combating increasingly sophisticated ways of cheating.

At Nottingham Trent's psychology department, for example, all third-year students had to post their projects online, making it easier to see if a piece of work had been copied.

"Tutors can set more and more novel questions so a student can't just go back to a model essay," Prof Underwood said.

"I asked my students to do a critical review on a new paper on which nobody would have done yet. By moving the goalposts it makes it more difficult to plagiarise."

A University of Nottingham spokesman said: "We are constantly updating our techniques for detecting plagiarism and uncovering any attempt to pass off copied work as original."

"There have been no more than a handful of incidents and in most cases breaches have related not to wilful deception but to a failure to attribute sources appropriately."

A Nottingham Trent University spokeswoman said: "We have a number of systems in place, together with an Academic Misconduct Code of Practice, to penalise those found to be cheating."

Barclay Littlewood, from Ravenshead, who runs Academic Answers Ltd including ukessays.com, said his company was providing legitimate support and not helping students cheat.

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Copyright 2006 NewsQuest Media Group Limited - All Rights Reserved
UK Newsquest Regional Press - This is Oxfordshire
August 3, 2006 Thursday

SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 388 words
HEADLINE:Students snap up web essays
DATELINE: Oxford Mail
BODY:

University students in Oxford are paying hundreds of pounds for specially-tailored essays bought off the Internet.

Up to 70 Oxford undergraduates a day visit the website of a firm which offers help with coursework.

Students pay ukessays.com £240 for a bespoke 2,000 word-essay which is "guaranteed a 2:1" and is delivered in five days, or £1,200 for a 10,000-word dissertation delivered within ten days.

Ukessays.com is just one of more than a hundred companies to offer such a service. It has a team of 3,500 writers who have supplied more than 15,000 people with tailor-made essays since 2003.

The firm's owner, Barclay Littlewood, saw his company record a £1.6m turnover last year.

He says he makes between four to ten sales in Oxford a week "during busy times".

Mr Littlewood said: "Oxford University provides us with the third highest number of online visitors of any university in England.

"We get between 65 and 70 (website) visitors a day from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes."

Mr Littlewood said the essays should only be used as a "starting point" and a "source" to develop ideas.

He said his firm would not supply essays to any students who it believed were planning to pass the work off as their own.

Jude Carroll, deputy director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oxford Brookes, confirmed essays bought from websites have been handed in by students.

She said: "It's very common everywhere and why would Oxford Brookes be any different? We are ahead of the game at Brookes, for the last six years we have been developing world leading systems to detect plagairism. Everybody is taking it very seriously."

But an Oxford University spokeswoman said: "Just because students look on the website does not mean they are buying the essays. Out of all UK universities, Oxford University will have the lowest incidents of plagarism, because of the assessment tutorial system.

"Students have to produce essays once a week for their tutorials but these essays are not assessed, they are to facilitate learning. Undergraduates are assessed mainly through exams, not coursework. If a student did cheat and pay for an essay it would be obvious."

The Commons Education Select Committee has announced an investigation into the £200m online industry amid fears of plagiarism and cheating.

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SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 343 words
HEADLINE:Oxford students among 'worst culprits' for buying essays
DATELINE: The Oxford Times
BODY:

UNIVERSITY students in Oxford are among the most frequent visitors to a website selling specially-tailored essays.

Up to 70 undergraduates in the city every day are visiting the website of a firm which offers a leg-up with coursework.

Students are paying internet firm ukessays.com £240 for a bespoke 2,000-word essay which is "guaranteed a 2:1" and delivered in five days, or £1,200 for a 10,000-word dissertation delivered within ten days.

Ukessays.com, which is just one of more than a hundred companies to offer such a service, has a team of 3,500 writers who have supplied more than 15,000 people with tailor-made essays since the business began in 2003.

The firm's owner, Barclay Littlewood, estimates that his company can make between four and ten sales in Oxford each week "during busy times".

Mr Littlewood said: "Oxford University provides us with the third highest number of online visitors of any university in England.

"I would say we get between 65 and 70 visitors (to the website) a day from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes."

An Oxford University spokesman denied plagiarism was a problem at the university.

She said: "Just because students look on the website does not mean they are buying the essays. Out of all the universities in the UK, Oxford University will have the lowest incidents of plagiarism, because of the assessment tutorial system.

"Students have to produce essays once a week for their tutorials but these essays are not assessed, they are to facilitate learning. Undergraduates are assessed mainly through exams, not coursework.

"And if a student did cheat and pay for an essay it would be obvious as they have to discuss the ideas in the essay during the tutorial.

"Our tutors are trained to spot plagiarism and it will not be tolerated."

Jude Carroll, deputy director of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oxford Brookes University, said essays bought from websites had been handed in by students.

Cambridge University students were the most frequent visitors to the Ukessays.com website.

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Copyright 2006 HT Media Ltd - All Rights Reserved
Indo-Asian News Service
August 2, 2006 Wednesday 3:02 PM EST
LENGTH: 629 words
HEADLINE:Online 'plagiarism' threatens quality of British degrees
BYLINE: Indo-Asian News Service
DATELINE: London
BODY: London, Aug 2 -- The practice of online sites selling essays and completed assignments to students has reached a 200-million-pound business, threatening to seriously undermine the quality of British education, academics and MPs say.

The issue has reached such proportions that the House of Commons education select committee is to hold a special session later this year to investigate it. Vice-chancellors of British universities have scheduled a 'plagiarism summit' in October.

New online sites are appearing almost every week while many sites report incomes in millions as students prefer to buy their assignments instead of spending hours poring over books in the library and working on the coursework.

Early this year, Alan Grafen, senior proctor at Oxford University, warned that widespread plagiarism threatened the value of an Oxford degree. A recent study found that one in six university students admits to cheating in some way.

According to investigation by Robert Clarke and Thomas Lancaster of the University of Central England, Internet cheating and selling tailored essays has assumed the dimensions of international trade. They call the trend 'contract cheating'.

Many online sites outsource the essays required to experts who are then paid a portion of the fee paid to the site by the studentS. Reports say that many such experts are based in India, particularly in the area of information technology.

Such sites, however, refute that they encourage plagiarism. They claim that their work is mainly intended as a 'guide' to students, who use their products as a base for their own study. The sites merely help by sifting the references and other material requireD to complete the assignment.

This argument, however, does not convince many academics who believe that what is called a 'guide' is in fact a complete assignment to which the purchasing student merely adds his or her name and submits it to the university.

The owner of one such online company, www.ukessays.com, Barclay Littlewood, told The Guardian: "Our turnover for 2005 was 1.6 million pounds. In one week in early May we took 90,000 pounds. One of our customers has spent 17,000 pounds with us. My overheads are pretty low because we work from home and our writers work on commission. So I take about a third of 1.6 million pounds."

His company is reported to have supplied more than 15,000 people with tailor-made essays since the business began in 2003.

According to Littlewood, "We always tell students to check their university guidelines. We say take a common sense approach. You have to use it like you would any other source. The essay is a starting point. You use it to build a new argument you haven't thought of before. We do the sifting out for you. We're also showing how to write a great essay".

Littlewood estimates that the essay-writing business is worth 200 million pounds in Britain, with a new site appearing every month.

A spokesman for Universities UK said several institutions had expressed concern about the websites, saying that vulnerable students might be lured into buying substandard essays.

"The suggestion that these are to be used by students as 'guides' is both absurd and dishonest. Universities say it is irresponsible, risks undermining the quality of a UK higher education degree and should be tackled more forcefully," he said.

Several education institutes have invested in software, which enables lecturers to check if the assignment submitted has been plagiarised from the Internet or not.

But some websites are so confident that they claim their essays can be run through plagiarism software without fear of detection, and even offer a money back guarantee.

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Indo-Asian News Service.

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Copyright 2006 Nottingham Evening Post - All Rights Reserved
Nottingham Evening Post
August 2, 2006 Wednesday

SECTION: Pg. 18
LENGTH: 690 words
HEADLINE:Essays for cash 'not cheating'
BYLINE: JAMES SMITH
BODY: A Notts businessman criticised for selling ready-made university essays has defended his business.

Barclay Littlewood runs Academic Answers Ltd, including ukessays.com, a website where students can order essays and dissertations.

But selling tailored university work has been criticised by senior university figures.

They say it offers a way for lazy students to gain good degrees and undermines the image of higher education.

But Mr Littlewood, 29, of Ravenshead, says his products are only intended as a starting point for students.

He says the website tells customers to abide by the rules of their university and advises them not to hand in the essays and dissertations provided.

"Students can use us without feeling guilty," he said. "We're not here to help people cheat, but to help them with their studies."

Mr Littlewood says he studied law at Staffordshire University before moving to London for his Bar Vocational Course.

His business started when students he had been tutoring in London began asking him for private tuition and model essays. When the demand became too great, he asked colleagues to help.

Academic Answers was formed in London nearly four years ago and transferred to Nottingham a year later.

It employs four people at its base in Ravenshead, but has a roster of 3,500 qualified writers.

Prices start from £120 for a 1,000-word undergraduate essay at a guaranteed 2.1 standard. A 10,000-word, Masters level, first class full dissertation costs £3,200.

Mr Littlewood, 28, who describes himself as an internet entrepreneur, claims the company turned over £1.6m in the last financial year - growing from £400,000 in the first year.

"I wish this service had been about when I was a student," he said.

He believes there are about 10,000 sites offering the service worldwide.

As reported in the Evening Post yesterday, Universities UK is holding a conference in October to discuss the wider issue of plagiarism. Among topics on the agenda will be the proliferation of services offering essays and dissertations for cash.

A spokesman for the organisation said: "

The sites might tell students not to hand in these essays, but if they are desperate then they will."

The conference will look at ways of tackling the multi-million pound industry.

Mr Littlewood says he has been calling for regulation of his industry - which he believes is worth £200m a year in the UK alone - for years.

"There are other types of companies out there who provide the copyright for the work to the students which means dishonest students can get a degree without doing any work," he said.

"At present there's no law against this so there are companies doing this with no morals whatsoever, many from outside this country."

Mac Daly, University of Nottingham AUT president, said he believed the only winners when it came to cash for essays were people like Mr Littlewood.

"It simply encourages plagiarism, which is an academic offence," he said.

"People using these services face opprobrium or even removal. Essays which are not specifically on the answer face getting low marks, although they shouldn't get any at all.

"You're supposed to learn at university, not just pay for a qualification."

He says markers can spot essays bought from the internet because they do not answer the question specifically enough and some students leave in American spellings.

However, proving plagiarism is difficult because you have to find the source.

Steve Doran, 20, a female politics student at the University of Nottingham, says many of her friends have talked about using websites, but have chosen not to - not because of moral reasons, but from fear of being caught.

"They drill it into you that you will get caught," she said. "I'd love to say I'm against it in principle and I would feel bad about lying to my teachers, but I can understand people considering it if they have a deadline for tomorrow or need to get their grade up.

"I don't see any problem with downloading these things as a study guide, but I struggle to think of anyone who is going to pay that amount of money for a guide when we can access all sorts of information for free at the library."

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Copyright 2006 Nottingham Evening Post - All Rights Reserved
Nottingham Evening Post
August 2, 2006 Wednesday
SECTION: Pg. 18
LENGTH: 185 words
HEADLINE:Essay website's warning
BODY: The main concern raised by universities is that students could buy their way to a good degree by using these services.

Universities UK say this could undermine the credibility of degrees.

However, Barclay Littlewood says his firm tells students not to use the work provided through ukessays.com as their own.

They are "personalised research services" on which people can base their own work.

On its website, the terms and conditions claim the company, its employees and agents "do not support or condone plagiarism, and reserve the right to refuse supply of our services to those that we suspect of such behaviour".

It adds that "none of Degree Essays UK's assignments are to be passed off as the customer's own or as anyone else's, nor to be handed in as the customer's own work, either in whole or in part" and warns against distributing them.

If these conditions are breached the company can refuse to work for that customer again and is not to be held liable.

Mr Littlewood said he had only been contacted by a university once. "On that one occasion I asked the university to send me details and they failed to do so."

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SECTION: GUARDIAN LEADER PAGES; Pg. 31
LENGTH: 155 words
HEADLINE:Reply Letters and emails: Varying degrees of plagiarism
BYLINE: Dr Paul Flewers
BODY: Were people to consider higher education, as I was lucky enough to be able to do, as an arena for disinterested study, researching and writing for one's own edification and enjoyment, then student plagiarism (How do you make £1.6m a year and drive a Ferrari? Sell essays for £400, July 29) would be a minor and containable problem.

However, now that for young people the obtaining of a degree is an absolute necessity if they are to obtain anything like a worthwhile job - and with the praise heaped by the popular media on the rich and famous who have succeeded by bending the rules - are we to be surprised that Barclay Littlewood can make a fortune by selling ready-made essays? Computer technology has assisted the rise of plagiarism, but it is not the cause of it. Any attempt to get to grips with the problem must start by addressing the question of what students expect to gain by entering higher education.

Dr Paul Flewers

London

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SECTION: GUARDIAN LEADER PAGES; Pg. 31
LENGTH: 196 words
HEADLINE:Reply Letters and emails: Varying degrees of plagiarism
BYLINE: Michael Collins
BODY: * Barclay Littlewood of ukessays.com is not doing anything illegal; he is helping students - especially those who are lazy, ill-organised, confused, behind with their deadlines and who have more money than moral sense.

But Barclay and others like him are encouraging plagiarism and undermining two learning outcomes of higher education degrees that are lifelong and outlast the transfer of the narrow and dated knowledge encompassed in most courses - the searching out and organising of ideas, and the use and development of the student's creative and critical faculties, competencies needed in all graduate jobs.

There are two possible answers: first, the government could outlaw such commercial operations, but this is most unlikely, being too low priority, not engendering sufficient political guts, and too complex to draft into law. Second, for vice-chancellors could agree to produce generic examination regulations treating the extensive use - 10% or more by content of such model essays - as plagiarism, with the usual penalties. They should also fund Universities UK to maintain a database of such model answers that tutors can search.

Michael Collins

Shepshed, Leicestershire

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Copyright 2006 Guardian Newspapers Limited - All Rights Reserved
The Guardian (London) - Final Edition

August 1, 2006 Tuesday
SECTION: GUARDIAN HOME PAGES; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 533 words
HEADLINE:GCSE coursework to be curtailed to stop internet cheats:Watchdog recommends overhaul of exam system: Tests to be completed in class to prevent plagiarism
BYLINE: Matthew Taylor, Education correspondent
BODY: The drive to stop cheating was stepped up last night as the exam watchdog unveiled plans to prevent students from taking GCSE coursework home. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said tests should be completed under controlled conditions in the classroom to curb online plagiarism and excessive parental help.

The move, which would affect tens of thousands of students, comes amid growing concern about the growth of internet cheating at both schools and universities.

On Saturday, the Guardian revealed that MPs are to investigate the trade in online essays, estimated to be worth £200m a year, in the autumn. Their inquiry will coincide with a plagiarism summit organised by university vice-chancellors.

In the latest move, Ken Boston, the chief executive of the QCA, says in a newly released letter to the then education secretary, Ruth Kelly, that the amount of unsupervised coursework should be dramatically reduced. "We recognise that the practice of students carrying out coursework at home and the wide availability of the internet have created greater opportunities for malpractice," he wrote. "This gives problems with ensuring authenticity and hence fairness."

Ms Kelly had asked the authority to review the use of coursework in GCSEs. Dr Boston's letter, dated April 7, represented the QCA's interim advice, which has been backed by regulators in Wales and North ern Ireland. Final recommendations will be made in the autumn. Dr Boston suggested that future specifications for GCSE subjects place greater emphasis on exams and coursework tests in class. "(In) subjects that involve such activities as creating a physical product, carrying out investigations or performing with others, internal assessment is likely to continue but under conditions that maximise fairness."

The growth in plagiarism was underlined last week when Barclay Littlewood, the owner of the online essay company ukessays.com, told the Guardian he had made £90,000 during one week in May. "Our turnover for 2005 was £1.6m," he said. "One of our customers has spent £17,000 with us." The company is one of thousands that have sprung up recently, and Mr Littlewood and his 3,500 writers have supplied more than 15,000 people with tailor-made essays since 2003.

Last night, Nick Gibb, the Tory schools spokesman, said: "There has been a huge problem with coursework as a means of assessment in recent years as plagiarism and illicit outside help has undermined the objectivity of the exam."

David Eastwood, who is to take charge of the Higher Education Funding Council for England in September, backed calls for a change in the exam system."The A-level is a qualification that was developed during the second world war, so I think the time has come to move on . . . We want high-quality academic - and vocational - qualifications that are stretching and exciting. It's maintaining the stretch and the quality of the qualification that is important, not the label on the tin."

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said the recommendations were likely to be adopted. "The expectation is that in future (coursework) will only be used where it is the most valid way of assessing subject-specific skills."

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SECTION: GUARDIAN LEADER PAGES; Pg. 27
LENGTH: 56 words
HEADLINE:Reply Letters and emails: Septic Yanks
BYLINE: John Wakeford
BODY:

* The vice-chancellors' decision to tackle plagiarism is timely (News, July 29). Perhaps they could invite Barclay Littlewood to explore the relationship between the problem at Oxford and No 10's publication of the Iraq dossier- its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation?

John Wakeford

Missenden Centre, Buckinghamshire

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SECTION: GUARDIAN HOME PAGES; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 913 words
HEADLINE: Q: How do you make £1.6m a year and drive a Ferrari? A: Sell essays for £400: Universities call summit to combat plagiarism: Industry estimated to be worth £200m a year
BYLINE: Matthew Taylor and Riazat Butt
BODY:

The multimillion-pound trade in internet cheating which sees thousands of students hand over money in return for bespoke essays is to be investigated by a committee of MPs, it has emerged.

The move comes as the Guardian unveils the scale of the market in online plagiarism, estimated to be worth £200m, which has seen a boom in the number of companies offering tailored essays in the last 12 months.

The owner of one online organisation says he employs 3,500 specialist writers who have written more than 15,000 essays for students wanting a leg-up in university courses. The company made £90,000 in one week in May and the owner has a Ferrari and a Lamborghini in his garage.

The scale of the problem, which affects schools and universities, was underlined last night when vice-chancellors announced they will hold a plagiarism summit in October to devise ways of stemming the online trade.

In a separate move, the exams watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, has confirmed it is reviewing the reliance on coursework in GCSE and A-level subjects thought to be most susceptible to plagiarism.

Barry Sheerman, chair of the Commons education select committee, said it would be holding a special session in the autumn to investigate the problem. "I think there will be a move back to exam-only courses, especially in subjects like history and English, because of the increasing concern about plagiarism."

A recent study found that one in six university students admits to cheating in some way. This year Alan Grafen, senior proctor at Oxford University, warned that widespread plagiarism threatened the value of an Oxford degree.

But Barclay Littlewood, owner of online company ukessays.com, disagrees. With a stable of sports cars in his garage, he has done well out his business and says he provides a guide for students rather than helping them cheat.

"Our turnover for 2005 was £1.6m. In one week in early May we took £90,000. One of our customers has spent £17,000 with us. My overheads are pretty low because we work from home and our writers work on commission. So I take about a third of £1.6m."

His company is one of thousands that have sprung up in recent years and he and his team have supplied more than 15,000 people with tailor-made essays since the business began in 2003.

Universities and exam watchdogs say the companies are encouraging people to cheat and undermining the UK's academic record. But Mr Littlewood said: "We always tell students to check their university guidelines. We say take a common-sense approach. You have to use it like you would any other source. The essay is a starting point. You use it to build a new argument you haven't thought of before. We do the sifting out for you. We're also showing how to write a great essay."

Mary (not her real name), who graduated with a first class law degree from the Open University, is a legal executive and writes essays for ukessays.com. In a quiet period she can earn £400 a week; during busier times, something closer to £1,000.

"It took me a while to get my head round what Barclay was doing, I wanted to make sure it was all above board. I'm proud of what I do. If I've helped someone who's been sweating it out and point them in the right direction, that gives me a sense of satisfaction."

Mr Littlewood estimates that the essay-writing business is worth £200m in the UK, with a new sites appearing every month.

Last night university bosses said almost every institution regards plagiarism - and online essay providers - as a threat to higher education. A spokesman for Universities UK said several institutions had expressed concern about the websites, including that vulnerable students might be lured into buying substandard essays.

Vice-chancellors, university managers and senior academics were expected to attend the conference in the autumn, which would look at all aspects of online essays. "The suggestion that these are to be used by students as 'guides' is both absurd and dishonest. Universities say it is irrespon sible, risks undermining the quality of a UK higher education degree and should be tackled more forcefully."

Philip Pothen, from the Joint Information Systems Committee, which funds the UK's Plagiarism Advisory Service, said more than 200 further education colleges and universities have software which enables lecturers to check suspect work against five billion web pages.

"Obviously this is a big issue, I don't think there are any places were institutions don't think this is a serious problem."

He said many universities have a full-time member of staff dedicated to tackling plagiarism.

"It's not just about catching people cheating and punishing them, it's about a whole education process. We are trying to help pupils understand about sourcing and referencing properly, about how to create a proper bibliography . . . In the end, the students who are using these services are not gaining the skills they need for their course or for later life."

But those at the sharp end of the online essay market insist they are doing nothing wrong.

Mr Littlewood says his target market is the honest student, although he concedes that it's "exceptionally difficult" to know what students are doing with the paid-for essay.

"I don't see what students are getting from wading through lots of research; they know what's relevant and what's not. Our answers are fully referenced but they're our opinion. Students need to analyse our answer and work from there."

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2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Observer November 27, 2005
SECTION: Observer News Pages, Pg. 27

LENGTH: 591 words

HEADLINE:Comment: Log on for easy learning: While the government gets exercised about education, others know the answer is just a click away

BYLINE: Tim Adams

BODY:
IN THE PAST few days, I've had several goes at reading the government white paper on education, 'Higher Standards, Better Schools'. There are plenty of phrases that have made my eyes swim but the sentence I kept stumbling on was from the Prime Minister: 'We believe parents should have greater power to drive the new system; it should be easier for them to replace the leadership or set up new schools where they are dissatisfied with existing schools.'

Like a lot of the paper, it almost sounded reasonable until you stopped to think of its implications, and then a whole list of supplementary questions tumbled out. Why, for example, would anyone prefer a self-selecting group of parents to be setting up and running their local school than, say, a group of trained and experienced education professionals? Or, if you did fancy a change of leadership, was it a question of forming a PTA vigilante group and striding into the nearest headmaster's/headmistress's office and running him or her out of town?

On the day that the Prime Minister was trying, along with the hapless duo of Lord Adonis and Ruth Kelly, to explain this particular part of his legacy to his emboldened backbenchers, more evidence emerged that while radical new futures were being considered, the current system of testing and examination was running badly out of control.

Not only did reports reveal that it was now possible to get a C in GCSE maths with a score of 16 per cent, but the coursework at GCSE and A-level, which already sharply favours middle-class students with their extra access to resources, was increasingly being purchased from the internet. Evidence of downloaded cheating was up 9 per cent, but this was probably the tip of the iceberg. Though one exam board was bringing in anti-plagiarism software, no one really seemed to believe that such measures would be effective.

The government is no stranger to cutting and pasting essays from the internet and passing them off as its own work. Still, surely it would not be too difficult to shut down this particular scam. Ruth Kelly, in response to the report, suggested simply that greater vigilance was required. There was no mention of looking into putting pressure on internet providers to weed out the companies selling exam grades or, better, a little piece of legislation that made the practice of advertising 'plagiarism-proof A-level coursework' illegal, as many educationalists have called for. A simple Google search throws up all of the profiteers.

Alternatively, perhaps, the government should consider a return to the not very radical but effective system that favoured properly invigilated and assessed examination over parent-and-Yahoo!-assisted project work. Though then, perhaps, it would be harder to claim, as the white paper does, that standards are magically rising year on year.

In order to try to answer some of these questions, I turned, along with many other inquiring minds, to the internet for help. A company called Degree Essays UK, 'Endorsed by the Sunday Times ', so it had to be good, offered to write me an essay on any subject I came up with. I could choose the standard I wanted it: GCSE, A-level, or 2:1 degree. It would be written just for me and undetectable by the exam police.

I reckoned I needed about a thousand words. They could do this overnight at a cost of £575. I then suggested the subject. 'What exactly is the Blair government promising for education? And how on earth will it work?' So far, answer has come there none.

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SECTION:First Edition; NEWS; Pg. 32
LENGTH:693 words
HEADLINE:'THEY'VE SOLD THEIR ACADEMIC INTEGRITY FOR A FEW QUID'
BODY:
Internet shopping has become an essential part of life for many struggling with the work life balance. Whether it's bacon and eggs from Tesco, Harry Potter and Snow Patrol from Amazon or a cruise in the Caribbean from P&O - it's only a couple of clicks away.

Why spend precious time increasing your stress levels in high-street shops when you can achieve the same results while sipping a glass of Chardonnay in the comfort of your own home?

Anyone involved in higher education will tell you that students, full-time and part-time, face competing and ever-increasing pressures. Full-time students face mounting debts for fees, books and accommodation. Many have at least one job to help support their studies and like all students they want to enjoy the social experience of university life.

Part-time students do their best to balance work, family and academic pressures; which would be fine if there were 36 hours in every day and nine days in every week.

Now a new generation of dot.com companies come to the rescue of the hard-pressed student, offering to write essays, assignments and dissertations to order or 'off the peg' for as little as £29.99.

They appear on the internet as 'academic ghost-writers' or 'personal researchers'.

But if students use these services and pass the resulting essays off as all their own work, it amounts to cheating on a grand scale.

On her now famous website, Elizabeth Hall strikes a chord with many fraught and exhausted MBA students with this seductive statement: 'An MBA is a career investment, but balancing your present post with career plans whilst maintaining a life/work balance is a near impossible task.

'Investing in EHA (Elizabeth Hall Associates) MBA ghost-writing services is investing in your career and the rest of your life.'

Such a huge personal and financial investment cannot be put at risk as she explains.

'Having your assignment written by an academic - a marker - ensures that it is as near as it is ever possible to be exactly what is required and more. We deliver what the marker wants to read ... every time.'

Degree Essays UK 'proudly offer you the UK's first guaranteed 2:1 and first-class standard 'personalised essays' service', which, it claims, are scanned for plagiarism and virtually undetectable by the best universities in the UK.

Of course, these and many other websites contain warnings to students, reminding them of the penalties for plagiarism.

But such warnings are usually in the website's equivalent of small-print, and since the companies make clear and unequivocal promises of confidentiality and security, the risk of being caught must seem small.

Now, you may be wondering, who on earth is writing this stuff?

Well, as we all know, money talks, and more than 3,700 academics are writing for Degree Essays UK which promises up to £1,000 a month for part-time work.

Papers4you.com invites academics to sell assignments, papers and dissertations they have produced over the years - a kind of academic recycling.

In an article in The Times a law tutor said he was making £10,000 on top of his salary, selling essays which were accepted at some of the best universities in the country, including Newcastle, Durham and Bristol.

This is a huge problem for universities throughout the UK and though it is not a new problem, it is a very, very difficult one to solve.

On the one hand, there have always been students who will cheat, but it has never been so easy, so accessible and so apparently undetectable.

On the other hand it seems that a proportion of the academic community has become so morally bankrupt that they are prepared to sell their academic integrity for a few extra quid a month.

I believe all honest academics and students should stand up and be counted, so I am launching a personal crusade against the cheats.

I do so on behalf of the hundreds of hard-working, hard-pressed and hard-up students it has been my privilege to help graduate with qualifications they honestly and richly deserve.

Kath Ringwald is senior economist at Newport Business School, University of Wales

LOAD-DATE: August 4, 2005

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Copyright 2005 TSL Education Limited - The Times Higher Education Supplement
April 8, 2005

SECTION: No.1686; Pg.2
LENGTH: 420 words
HEADLINE:Bought Essays Fail To Hit The Mark
BYLINE: Phil Baty

BODY:
Students who think they can beat plagiarism detection software by paying an internet ghostwriting service to produce bespoke essays may want to think again, writes Phil Baty.

An experiment at Loughborough University, in which students bought essays from internet services that write one-off pieces of work to order, found that they were of poor quality, sometimes riddled with mistakes and unlikely to earn more than a third or lower second-class grade.

Charles Oppenheim, Loughborough's professor of information science, who led the experiment and marked the essays, said: "As well as breaking the rules on cheating, students who use these services are taking a big risk because they are clearly not getting value for money."

In the trial, carried out in conjunction with BBC Radio Four for broadcast on April 15, Professor Oppenheim gave students a genuine title, "Does UK copyright law provide an adequate balance between the needs of rightholders and users?", and told them to buy a 1,500-word essay. He confirmed that all the essays produced were bespoke, adding that off-the-peg work was more easily picked up by anti-plagiarism software.

The lowest-marked essay was by Essays-R-Us (www.essays-r-us.co.uk), which charged Pounds 205 and produced work that barely scraped a third, with 42 per cent. Professor Oppenheim said the essay had basic errors and suffered from "appalling" English.

The site says: "Essays-R-Us is a unique service of ready-made and tailor-made essays and research facilities for both professionals and academics." But customers are warned: "We accept no responsibility for any inaccuracies that may arise from time to time."

The essay from Papers4You (www.coursework4you.co.uk) was not much better.

The website boasts "a small team of professional writers" who hold "at least a masters level degree", from "top UK universities" such as the London School of Economics and Birmingham University. It says its papers "are usually 70 per cent-plus standard". Professor Oppenheim gave the essay 54 to 55 per cent - a moderate lower second class degree standard.

The best essay was delivered by Degree Essays UK (www. ukessays.com), part of Academic Answers Ltd, which is registered at Companies House. The service described itself as "the best essays and dissertation service in the UK" and said its essays were "guaranteed to be of a 2.1 or a first class standard".

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Copyright 2005 TSL Education Limited The Times Higher Education Supplement
January 28, 2005
SECTION: No.1676; Pg.58

LENGTH: 1031 words

HEADLINE:Nip Double Trouble In The Bud

BYLINE: Harriet Swain

BODY:
Plagiarism can be hard to prove, so why waste time on punishment when better assessment methods can stop copycats in their tracks? Harriet Swain investigates

You have just marked a great essay -original, cogently argued and factually accurate. Can it really be the work of one of your students? Thanks particularly to the world wide web, your doubts may well be justified. How can you be sure? And how can you guard against the possibility of plagiarism in future?

Most experts agree that it is worth spending a lot more time tackling the last question than the first two.

Jude Carroll, senior lecturer in teaching and learning at Oxford Brookes University, says you would be far better off making a course less plagiarism-friendly or telling students how to avoid plagiarism than pursuing a case against a suspected guilty student.

Even the Plagiarism Advisory Service, run by the Joint Information Systems Committee, which provides an online detection service enabling comparison of students' work against electronic sources, states: "Electronic plagiarism detection cannot solve the problem of plagiarism. Detection should be used as part of a wider approach to prevention."

Gill Rowell, support officer for the PAS, says that the detection service itself can be a useful prevention tool since it does not distinguish between sources that have been used unacknowledged and those that have been properly cited. It can therefore help to show students how to use citations correctly.

Rowell says that many students don't plagiarise deliberately; they simply don't understand how not to.

Niall Hayes, lecturer in organisation, work and technology at Lancaster University Management School, and author of a study on cultural differences and plagiarism, agrees that while "the word plagiarism implies intentionality, that isn't necessarily the case". For example, students from some cultural backgrounds differ in their understanding of ownership of intellectual property.

Hayes says that one of the most important things for students to understand is how to paraphrase and how to reference that paraphrasing. "We say to them that if they have a paragraph without any references, they should look at it closely because it is unlikely that it's all their own ideas," he says. He also encourages students to use bibliographical software and to reference as they go. In addition, he recommends two read-throughs of the final work -one to check English and presentation, the other to check referencing.

Rowell says that most methods for helping students to avoid plagiarism are simply good teaching practice: don't recycle assignments; try to ask for an analytical and critical approach rather than information. She suggests being particularly careful with subjects, such as Shakespeare, on which numerous essays are available on the web. It may be useful to get students to relate the topic to their own experiences, or, if discussing a historical subject, to draw parallels with a modern-day figure.

While some of the more sophisticated websites offer essays to order, even they claim to have qualms about plagiarism. A spokesman for one of these, Degree Essays UK, says that it will not supply an essay that is blatantly going to be passed off as a client's own.

Another solution could be to change the format of an assignment, suggests Rowell, by asking students to develop a webpage, or assess an online discussion on the topic.

Her advice is to "ask students to compare, evaluate, take apart -at least then you've moved from wholesale download to cut and paste". She also suggests keeping assignments specific and topical. She warns that students plagiarise if they feel the question is too general or too tired -and the answer too readily available electronically.

A key tip is to value the process as much as the product. "If all the emphasis is on the end result, you don't know who got the result," Carroll says. It is therefore a good idea to ask for a first draft, weekly updates or a learning log before the final piece of work. Alternatively, you could demand that early drafts or copies of the most important research sources are submitted along with the finished assignment.

She adds that it is important to do something that authenticates the activity students are doing. This could mean in-class quizzes, watching students doing part of their coursework, or giving 10 per cent of students a viva.

In a paper on "The New Plagiarism", Jim Evans, of Warwick University's Centre for Academic Practice, suggests getting students to write a "metaessay" -an essay about their essay -immediately after handing in their major project. This essay would answer questions about what they had learnt from the assignment, what problems they faced and how they overcame them. Not only would this allow the tutor to compare writing styles, it would also make students think about the learning process.

Hayes says that some of the advice on plagiarism he passes on to students is just as useful for academics, particularly when it comes to new technology. One tip that he has adopted is not to have too many computer windows open at one time, or at least to colour each window differently so that it is clear which source is which if you are cutting and pasting information.

Carroll warns that student plagiarisers who become academics are likely to continue their bad practices. Prevent a plagiariser now and you may secure your future citations.@Details = Information: JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service: www.jiscpas.ac.uk Jude Carroll, A Handbook for Deterring Plagiarism in Higher Education, available from the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University.

Jim Evans, "The New Plagiarism in Higher Education: From Selection to Reflection", Interactions, Vol 4, No 2, 2000 (available on Warwick University website)

TOP TIPS

Concentrate on prevention rather then detection

Explain to students what plagiarism is and how to avoid it

Change assignment questions and formats constantly

Test the learning process as well as the result

Be streetwise about what students are doing

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2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited - The Observer
June 20, 2004
SECTION: Observer News Pages, Pg. 13
LENGTH: 697 words
HEADLINE:Universities go to war on exam cheats: Study shows 90,000 students are regular plagiarists: New computer software will spot dishonest work
BYLINE: by Mark Townsend and Mark Hudson

BODY:
A SOPHISTICATED system to detect cheats is being considered by 140 universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, as new research reveals that more than 90,000 students regularly plagiarise essays.

All major universities are planning to introduce software to catch cheats in an attempt to protect the credibility of degree qualifications. Many lecturers are concerned by a growing market on the internet offering students customised essays for sale.

The move coincides with the first attempt to gauge the extent of plagiarism in higher education. The government-funded Plagiarism Advisory Service (PAS) suggests that more than 10 per cent of the 900,000 UK students in higher education 'insert sections of text from an outside source' into their work and attempt to pass it off as their own.

But experts feel the true scale of cheating is far higher because the definition of plagiarism used by the research consultancy FreshMinds is so narrow. The programme works by checking students' work against 8.5 billion web pages and is automatically updated with every journal, abstract and newspaper article printed.

Fiona Duggan, manager of the PAS, said the software would serve as a powerful deterrent and would help lecturers who waste time checking the work of students they suspect of cheating.

Officials from the government-funded Joint Information Systems Committee, who helped develop the software, are keen for students to be given regular guidance on what constitutes plagiarism. Charles Juwah, senior educational development officer at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen said: 'We give regular coaching on how to write academic work and maintain academic integrity. That is highly important.'

The move follows the latest row over exam cheats after a student was told he would get no marks for his essays because he had copied them from the internet. Such cases, however, remain rare, with no figures available from the government on how many students are caught cheating. But students told The Observer that the problem of plagiarism is huge.

One student at the University of Central Lancashire said: 'It happens a lot more than the lecturers think. If you take the right precautions, you won't get caught.' Although he was caught copying from a peer, the student remained unrepentant. 'I got a letter and had to go for a disciplinary meeting in front of the module leaders. They explained why they were suspicious of my work and compared it to this other piece, and after a lot of humming around I just did it again.'

Another student said that in his experience one in 10 cheated, mainly because they preferred partying to studying. A 21-year-old from Leeds Metropolitan University said: 'Probably because of the lifestyle they lead, they want to go out and get drunk and leave their work until the last minute. Then they panic. It happens a lot more than the lecturers know. If you're clever about it you can get away with it.'

Such sentiments explain the huge growth of companies targeting the thousands of students, from GCSE to undergraduate level, intent on plagiarising their way to a better degree.

Calls from teachers and lecturers for a plethora of internet sites to be investigated have been rejected by the government's exam watchdog, although officials are said to be concerned.

More than 15,000 students are estimated to have signed up to one website alone, which charges £9.99 for access to tens of thousands of assignments.

Another, Academic Answers Ltd, based in Nottingham, runs five websites and receives 800 requests a week for tailor-made essays. Barclay Littlewood, director of AAL, said that demand was so great that his firm could only meet around half of these orders.

The newly- formed company made £400,000 in its first year's trading, with Littlewood expecting this to double by next year. 'We're expecting 50 per cent of last year's customer to return, on top of new ones,' he said.

Of the company's websites, ukessays.com is the biggest, receiving 240,000 hits a year. The company charges £50 for a pre-written essay, and anywhere between £200 and £5,000 for an original piece.

(NB: We have corrected the URL in the above article - it was incorrectly stated to be 'co.uk' rather than 'com')

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Copyright 2004 Bristol United Press - Western Daily Press

April 7, 2004
EDITION: default
SECTION: News; Other; Others; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 519 words
HEADLINE:Cheaters' charter for students and pupils

BODY:
Cheating graduates are writing tailor-made essays and selling them to West students and school pupils, it can be revealed. Students are buying their way to success via websites offering graduates willing to write work - in exchange for hundreds of pounds depending on the length and grading of essays.

As they are written to order, teachers cannot use specialist software to detect if the work is plagiarised.

Education chiefs and MPs last night branded the practice a "cheaters' charter" and demanded laws to stop people exploiting the internet to scam their way through university.

Worried tutors in the West fear students will be tempted to pay hundreds of pounds for dissertations to get around software which matches internet essays to pupils' work.

Websites such as Ukessays. com and Essaysforstudents. co. uk charge for essays which they claim can be used as a supplement to tutoring, but should not be used in place of own work.

But yesterday websites admitted they cannot regulate how the essay will be used, while other websites explicitly advocate cheating.

Bath Lib Dem MP Don Foster, a former teacher, said: "Simply cribbing from the Internet is clearly cheating and cannot be accepted.

"I would love to see these websites closed down as they really are a cheaters' charter and we need to do everything we can to stop them.

"One thing we need is for the Secretary of State to look at taking action to tackle these sites. It will not be easy but it is an issue that also needs to be addressed by teaching unions and universities.

"We need to think about taking more control of the Internet without losing its vitality." A Bristol University spokesman said: "In an ideal world, sites like this which encourage cheating would be illegal but the problem is having legislation which makes it illegal.

"The sites do not advertise as offering to defraud the system - they couch it in terms which get round existing legislation. There appears to be a case for examining the law so that it catches organisations which are just making money by encouraging students to cheat, which is clearly contrary to the spirit of universities.

"These sites are a relatively new development and it is difficult to see what one can do other than hope the Government can outlaw them." There is also concern among education officials in schools and universities that A-Level students could cheat their way into top universities.

The essay-writing companies are adamant the services are not designed to encourage cheaters. Joe Hudson, sales executive for Academic Answers Ltd, which owns seven essay-writing companies, said they receive between 500 and 900 orders a week and numbers were increasing in the run-up to university coursework deadlines.

He said: "We cannot be sure students are not handing in the work as their own but we train staff to turn away students who they think will do so.

"We support regulation of companies offering essays because many offer them on a wink and nudge basis or have slogans such as 'cheat your way to an MBA' which we do not advocate."

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Copyright 2004 The Telegraph Group Limited
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
March 28, 2004, Sunday
SECTION: News Pg. 07

LENGTH: 814 words

HEADLINE:A-level students offered pounds 200 essays 'guaranteed to gain them an A-grade' Internet company provides sixth-formers with tailor-made exam coursework that's written for them by undergraduates

BYLINE: BY JULIE HENRY Education correspondent

BODY:
A-LEVEL students are buying tailor-made essays to submit as exam coursework from a company that claims to provide them with "guaranteed" top-grade answers written by university undergraduates.

The company, A-level Coursework UK, charges pounds 200 for a 2,000-word essay written to grade A standard and half the amount for a B-grade piece of work.

Each essay is written to the specifications set by the sixth- former ordering it, making it virtually impossible for an exam board to detect the fraud if the student tries to pass the work off as their own.

With the deadline for the submission of coursework for this year's A-levels only two months away, the company says that it is processing hundreds of orders made through its 24-hour service.

Joe Hudson, a sales executive with the company, which began operating on the internet in September, said: "We have been busy since we set up and have supplied more than 3,000 essays."

The company could not prevent students passing the work off as their own, but Mr Hudson said it insisted that youngsters were warned to check their school's guidelines about how such essays should be used.

"Like anything that can legitimately be of benefit, such as books and information from the internet, these things can also be used illegally," he said. "The system can be abused but I think the vast majority of young people that use us are honest."

However, he admitted that some sixth-formers who had ordered coursework had been planning to submit it as part of their A-level coursework and had asked: "What do you mean I can't hand it in?" when they were told the rules.

Coursework is required in nearly all A-levels and counts for between 20 and 60 per cent of the marks, depending on the subject. With the number of pupils achieving top grades rising to one in four and increased demand for straight As from leading universities, a good coursework score can mean the difference between winning or failing to gain a place.

The company boasts that essays bought from it will be "unique" pieces of work written to each student's requirements. It states that the essays will not be resold to other students for at least three years or placed on any essay database, ensuring that the pupil has "a vital individual edge over the academic competition".

The company also claims to be the only provider in Britain to guarantee A- or B-grade coursework. If the work fails to meet the quality promise, the company says that it will provide an improved piece free of charge.

Essays are fully referenced and scanned to ensure they are free of plagiarism.

About 1,200 university students have been recruited to write the "research pieces", which are available in 16 subjects. Each writer is required to have achieved at least a B grade in their own A-levels. According to the company, a student can earn pounds 300 a week for supplying the coursework.

The website publicising the service points out that the copyright on the coursework is retained by the company and that the work should not be distributed or passed off as the pupil's own.

The service was set up last year by Barclay Littlewood, a law graduate who also runs Degree Essays UK and Law Essays UK. He has also recently established an American office in Delaware.

Teachers have criticised the company, claiming that pupils could easily pass the work off as their own. Even if the essays were not used to cheat, teachers say that the service encourages children to skip the research and preparation work they should be doing themselves.

Olive Forsyth, the spokesman for the National Union of Teachers, said: "In a survey of nearly 2,000 secondary school teachers we conducted last year, the majority were very concerned about the use of pre-prepared material in coursework and said it was increasingly difficult to ensure the submitted work was the student's own."

Last year, more than 200 cases of plagiarism in coursework were discovered, according to the exam watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

A spokesman for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, one of the biggest exam boards in the country, said: "Coursework submitted for A-levels is marked by teachers and then moderated by examiners. Teachers are well placed to know the standard of their pupils' work and to detect anything unusual. If there are suspicions, we can compare the student's marks in other elements of the exam. This is not definitive, but it can be an indication of cheating.

"Moderators will also spot collusion between students if there are similarities between students' work. Inevitably, though, there has to be an element of trust involved."

Another exam board, Edexcel, said: "We take any cheating very seriously and action can include barring a student from the exam for life. Students have to sign a legal document declaring that all the work is their own."

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Copyright 2004 Newspaper Publishing PLC - The Independent (London)
January 2, 2004, Friday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 866 words
HEADLINE:PARENTS AND INTERNET HELP MIDDLE-CLASS PUPILS CHEAT EXAMS
BYLINE: SARAH CASSIDY EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT Mike Tomlinson: Wants coursework scrapped

BODY:
MIDDLE-CLASS students are cheating the system by completing their GCSE and A-level coursework with too much help from their parents and the internet, a survey of teachers has found.

Teachers fear the heavy reliance on coursework in exam syllabuses could put some students - especially boys and working-class candidates - at a disadvantage, according to the study carried out for the National Union of Teachers (NUT).

Those polled questioned the validity of coursework results, arguing that it was difficult to ensure that coursework was all a student's own work.

Caroline Wickenden, of London University's Institute of Education, who conducted the poll for the NUT, said middle- class students' access to the internet provided them with tailor-made coursework.

"Concern was expressed at the difficulty of ensuring that submitted coursework was the students' own, and that they had not received undue assistance," she said. "It was also commented that students with internet access could now readily copy information for inclusion in a coursework project, and some respondents said that it was possible to download specifically tailored coursework assignments."

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