Social Care Council warns students about cheating on assignments

The General Social Care Council (GSCC) is warning students that they will be breaching the Code of Practice if they submit someone else’s work as their own.

The regulator has for the first time issued guidance to social work students after its inspectors reported an increase in plagiarism.

In an information pack sent out to this year’s intake, setting out examples of banned behaviour, the GSCC warns that forging a tutor or practice teacher’s name on assessments or case notes, or submitting another person’s work and claiming it as their own, could call into question a student’s suitability to be on the social care register.

Sherry Malik, director of strategy at the GSCC said: “It’s vital that students know from the very start of their career that, as a member of the social work profession, there are certain standards that they must live up to in order to gain the trust and confidence of service users.”

Brian Stout, associate head of school of applied social sciences at De Montfort University, which has carried out research into how the university responds to plagiarism on professional degree courses, added: “An adjudication of academic misconduct has particular implications for students on programmes such as social work, where integrity and honesty in written communication is so vital.”

He said that there had been an increase in the detection of plagiarism and academic misconduct across all universities and all disciplines. “This is probably due both to students finding it easier to copy material from the internet, and to a greater ability of universities and colleges to detect plagiarism using electronic software,” he added.