“The Cheat Sheet” has covered the Pearson cheating problem. Forgive me, but I can’t resist quoting at length. It says:

…according to reports, apparent cheating on the PTE Academic Online Test, a test of English, has caused the test provider to cancel some scores, in turn causing some U.K. universities to hold or delay acceptance offers to foreign applicants.

According to the coverage, cheating was limited to the online versions of the test, delivered in China, by test provider Pearson. After an inquiry, the scores were canceled and some schools removed the test as proof of English competency.

So, two things.

The cheating was during the online test. The news coverage says:

The organisation’s in-person tests are unaffected.

Surprise, surprise.

And, though this is not exceptionally clear in the reporting, it does appear that the cheating was uncovered by the schools – not the test provider. The schools, the paper says, noticed a high number of prospects, ‘applying with full or very high marks.’

So, again – I just do not understand what test providers are doing if they’re not safeguarding their own exams.

But this is a good example of what happens when you don’t. First, people cheat. Second, it becomes public. Third, people stop using your test. Really pretty simple.

…

Before we move on, this issue apparently impacted hundreds of students. Hundreds. So much so that the coverage says:

Pearson has now stopped delivering the online test in China

Boy, there’s a show of confidence.”

Back to me:

While it is true that university administrators don’t pay a lot of attention to language testing (witness the number of schools that still list score requirements for, say, the TOEFL CBT), this particular substack is widely read by decision makers. Testing companies need to do better if they want their at-home tests to be widely accepted. At this rate they’ll never reach the holy grail of getting an at-home test accepted for immigration purposes.