Was there an attempt to cheat the ETS TOEIC English Language test?:
Background:
Panorama uncovered a major fraud involving some of the test centres used by the Government to ensure that immigrants have a sufficiently high standard of English.
My involvement:
Whilst there were undoubtedly thousands of fraudulent tests taken by proxy candidates (with the collusion of the staff at some test centres), the candidate I was asked to assist with an Expert Report claimed he did take the test himself.
It transpired that auditors from the testing company, ETS, (out sourced by the Home Office) were very suspicious that there may have been wholesale "fixing" of the TOEIC tests. I, (and they), believe that this may have involved a completely separate classroom running alongside the one housing the candidates. The separate room would have housed the proxy test takers whose results would have overridden the candidates in the main room. This would have been fine for the candidates paying extra to cheat, however, genuine candidates would also have been caught up in the scam on the basis that as long as they passed, they would not be suspicious.
The problem came when the testing company carried out tests involving voice recognition which showed that most of the TOEIC tests results were invalid or at least suspicious on the basis that the same voice was present on more than one test.
There were also questions relating to the date in the file properties of the voice recordings put forward by the home Office.
This was one of three test cases brought by the Home Office.
Following the case, I was also asked to provide a report for three similar cases in Scotland and several other cases in England.