In 2014, thousands of students were deported from the UK after being accused of cheating on English tests during their visa application process. For years, they and various MPs have been fighting to get their names cleared.
According to The Guardian, about 9,700 students were impacted. 2,500 of which were forced to leave and the remaining 7,200 were threatened with detention and later deportation if they stayed.
The accusations were made by a company called Education Testing Service (ETS), a US company that invigilated the tests. When BBC Panorama investigated looking for fraud, Education Testing Service claimed that 97% of all tests were fraudulent.
Panorama’s filming suggested that students were having other people take the tests for them or read answers to them during the test. This led to ETS labelling 58% of the tests as ‘invalid’ (i.e. fraudulent) and 39% as ‘suspicious’.
Later analysis that 97% of tests being fraudulent was implausible. It would simply not make sense for so many students to participate in such a large cheating operation undetected.
Panorama’s documentation most notably applied to only two test centres, meaning that any cheating could not be generalized to such a large number of students. There were eighty-eight other test centres that Panorama did not investigate.
The National Audit Office looked into the Home Office’s assessment of Education Testing Service’s assessment of the results. The National Audit Office determined that the Home Office was not qualified to determine whether Education Testing Service’s claims were accurate, as they did not consider the possibility that students had been wrongly accused.
As of 2022, thousands of legal appeals have been made by students aiming to clear their names. These accusations have prevented them from gaining education, employment and visas even outside the UK.
The Home Office has now changed the English testing process, but students are still advocating to have their names cleared. Stephen Kinnock, Shadow Home Office Minister, is now advocating for these students to receive assistance in overturning these charges.
