Due to the difficulty of being able to distinguish traditional watches from hightech watches, all watches will be banned from exam halls.
By commission of the exam boards, Sir John Dunford has stated that from A-levels and up, there will be a ‘blanket ban’ on all watches to prevent cheating.
Sir John, a former headteachers’ union leader, said, “smartwatches could look like conventional watches, leaving them open to misuse by cheats.”
The Independent Commission on Examination Malpractice, set up by exam boards to investigate the prevalence of cheating in public exams in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, says that overall there is a “very low level of malpractice”.
This ban will commence in all exams from now on.
