The number of students issued with penalties for wrongdoing in GCSE and A-level exams rose by more than two-fifths compared to the last pre-Covid year of exams.
Ofqual data, published on Thursday, shows 4,335 penalties were issued to students by exam boards this year – a stark rise from the 3,040 issued in 2019.
However this still equates to a very small number of students overall (3,895 of 1.2 million students who sat exams in 2022).
Penalties were issued in just 0.03 per cent of exam entries.
Mobile phone or other communication device ‘offences’ accounted for 1,845 penalties – the largest proportion of penalties in 2022 (43 per cent).
