I’m glad it’s not just me 
I think I only ever cheated once at school when I was 11 and I felt SO bad I owned up and asked my teacher if I could redo the geography exam
I’m gonna say no. Even if I might or might not have done it myself, it’s something that’s wrong to do. It’s weird to me how normalised it basically became. From my own experience speaking, I honestly think it has to do with the way education has been set up. How institutional it is, their is no space for needs of individual students.
As someone who especially during my teenage years had an extreme fair of failure, the pressure that came with having to perform in that one specific moment was often too much. So even if I had the knowledge, that would still lead to me struggling with tests. To me high school felt all about having to constantly pass tests over and over again, instead of actually growing as a person and learning. At one point I basically gave up even trying to grow and learn, cause it wouldn’t pay off during exams. Legit I would score the same if not higher not studying at all than if I made an effort.
Also, a bit in line with this, while I understand that education needs guidelines as in what students have to learn, I think it would be so much better if it would be more personalised. Not only in level of education, but also more attention to bringing the education in a way that actually makes students want to engage with it. Education should be about personal development in my opinion.
I feel like this are things that really could lead to people cheating at the moment, and just more personalization and attention for individuals could decrease it.
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The thing is, now that loads of exams are over computers and open-book, cheating is a lot more nefarious than it was before. I hate the idea of school tests as “how much do you remember” because that’s absolutely not a test of intelligence. Now, because you can’t stop people from checking through their notes if their tests are online, things are different. People who cheat are often plagiarising, which is a real moral disaster.
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Not gonna lie, open book tests make me feel like I’m cheating. Like I’m allowed to use it but still it feels wrong. But yeah, even if my uni used a anti cheating software (controversial but that’s another discussion) so I couldn’t check notes if it wasn’t allowed, I’ve noticed as well that during those open book exams, you are so focussed on the exam I’ve nearly forgotten you can’t actually like directly copy what’s in the book…
Also, out of curiosity, how do you think it would be best to test students? To prevent cheating and allow students to basically perform at their best? I’ve been thinking about this but nothing seems ideal to me 
I’ve never cheated… at least intentionally. I think I looked over at what another students writing but not to cheat idk why I did it, I was just curious to what they were putting down and then I was like “wait—shoot!”
I’ve always been terrible at tests. I’d do terrible at Public school lol, but at my current one we don’t have many tests. I’m scared for college. I really really suck at getting the motivation to study. The way I work is doing things last minute because I cannot for the life of me get any motivation to do it before then. I get A’s or higher if I’m getting bonus points for something on all other assignments but on tests i have a hard time getting A’s unless the test is really easy. Like my grammar class is way too easy so I can usually get 100% on it every time. But history… no. Like I need a few days of studying to ace that and I can’t get myself to do that…
Personally I would never cheat. I don’t condone cheating as well, but I’m not gonna turn you in or do anything if you do cheat. Don’t do stuff like plagiarizing tho, that’s like disgusting and no. Don’t do things like stealing other peoples work and claiming it as your own. I also don’t like it when people use sites that summarize the book instead of actually reading the book, or when people just don’t read the book and somehow can BS all of their assignments. That’s not gonna work in college (probably, at least a good one lol).
I am passionate about working hard to achieve your goals. If you’re going to college I just encourage working hard and accepting mistakes. The more you make, hopefully, the more you’ll learn and do better. If you’re not going to college and not doing anything academic and view Highschool as a waste of time and cheat because of that, I would disagree with you because I see education as extremely useful and important, but that’s understandable at least. Still don’t condone it tho obviously.
Conclusion: So is it ever okay? Well I’m not gonna get mad at you if you do it. It’s not any of my business. It’ll be different once I’m a teacher tho. But this is from a students perspective.
Honestly this may be a hot take but I can’t help but feel like cheating just reflects an issue with the current schooling system or could also reflect issues with the homelife of the child. A fear of failure. Or even not wanting to recieve the “punishment” if you fail. In my case, if I cheated it was genuinely so I wouldn’t get in trouble at home. I remember maths being the bane of my life in that situation, but I stopped cheating and started accepting that I was bad at it.
Would I have been able to improve if I’d done the tests/homework normally? Maybe! This is why I don’t condone cheating aside from the ethical reasons. Take the fail and use it to improve. (Easier said than done).
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Especially since during the actual GCSE you don’t have anyone to cheat from and you can get super disqualified if you do.
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Just now seeing this!
I don’t think it’s okay to cheat at all. Once someone cheats on something seemingly insignificant and gets away with it, it could open up a door for them to continue cheating because “I did it before and didn’t get caught”. Virtual classes made it much easier for students to cheat, and although I’ve never actually caught a student cheating during a virtual exam, I’ve heard of many cases where students would text their friends to ask for the answers to a particular exercise. Although the school where I work has pretty much gone back to in-person classes (with maybe 3-4 kids per group in hybrid mode), whenever we have exams, they are done virtually in order for the whole group to take the same type of exam. This was decided because there are still a few parents who don’t want to send their kids to in-person classes just yet. But, for example, I wouldn’t accuse a student of cheating unless I actually saw them taking out a cheat sheet, looking directly at someone else’s papers, or if it was an open-question exam and two or more students had the exact same answers.
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You should be able to make posts again! The system silenced you because the post was typed too fast. It only happens on your very first post though. So, you won’t run into this issue again. Welcome to the forums!