New "cheating" offences for post-16 education

POSTED BY GARY ATTLE | 29 APRIL 2022

| 1 min read

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill received Royal Assent on 28 April 2022.

The new Act includes a variety of measures relating to the post-16 education landscape, including new criminal offences aimed at stopping “cheating services”, often informally known as “essay mills”.

In summary, there are two new criminal offences, namely:

an offence of providing or arranging a relevant service in commercial circumstances; and
an offence of advertising a relevant service to students.

A “relevant service” is defined as: “a service of completing all or part of an assignment on behalf of a student where the assignment completed in that way could not be considered to have been completed personally by the student”.

The Act makes clear that a student does not commit an offence of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of the offence of providing/arranging a relevant service by making use of a relevant service to complete an assignment.

The Skills Minister Alex Burghart MP has written to internet service platforms to inform them of the new legislation.

Our content explained

Every piece of content we create is correct on the date it’s published but please don’t rely on it as legal advice. If you’d like to speak to us about your own legal requirements, please contact one of our expert lawyers.

Posted by

Gary Attle

Partner

Cambridge

New "cheating" offences for post-16 education

Our content explained

Posted by

Gary Attle

Visitors

Existing clients

Staff

New "cheating" offences for post-16 education

Our content explained

Posted by

Gary Attle

Tags

Popular tags

Subscribe

Visitors

Existing clients

Staff