School hackers hit maths exam

Cheating pupils at an Ayr school hacked into a teacher’s email account to access a prelim maths exam paper.

The whizzkids broke into the Belmont Academy teacher’s computer to get a sneaky look at the top secret paper ahead of their prelim last month.

But they were snared when all five got exceptional results – and staff smelled a rat.

The five cheats were marked down to ZERO in their exam after finding out a teacher’s username and password before accessing the paper.

The hackers had concerned parents and pupils contacting the Ayrshire Post to voice worries the cheating would result in the paper becoming void.

That would have meant 253 pupils would be forced to resit their exam.

Prelims are set by individual schools rather than the Scottish Qualifications Authority.

South Ayrshire Council confirmed that following the incident, all results stood and stressed that the prelim results no longer contributed as a safety net towards the final exam results.

The council’s education

Douglas Hutchison said: “It is disappointing that any pupils in our school have tried to undermine the integrity of the prelim exams.

“These exams are there to help pupils measure their progress and let staff know what needs to be done to get pupils ready for the actual exams later in the year.

“The only losers are the pupils involved, but we will continue to work with them to ensure they are ready for the SQA exams later this school session.

“Appropriate sanctions have been applied to those involved.”