AQA 7042 · C3.24 - Malpractice boundaries before and after authentication
The same ownership problem follows different reporting routes before and after a candidate signs. Learn to recognise the breach, preserve an accurate record and understand the roles of the candidate, centre and AQA.
Ownership and acknowledgement
Authentication is the formal confirmation that the submitted investigation is the candidate's own work and that help and sources have been acknowledged as required. A signature is therefore not a routine last box: it is a declaration about the truth of the submission.
AQA's ownership boundary covers more than copying a finished essay. A candidate must not:
| Prohibited action | What the rule protects |
|---|---|
| submit work that is not their own | The marks must represent the candidate's own historical thinking and writing. |
| lend their assessed work to another candidate | A candidate must not make their investigation available for copying or adaptation. |
| allow another candidate to access or use their independently sourced source material | Independent research cannot be replaced by taking over another candidate's curated material. |
| copy from books, websites or other sources without acknowledgement | The 2027 CRF requires sources to be clearly referenced, including material used to develop ideas even when its wording has been changed. |
| submit work word-processed by a third person without acknowledgement | Undisclosed third-party involvement makes the record of authorship inaccurate. |
| include inappropriate, offensive or obscene material | Assessed work must remain within AQA and centre requirements. Uncertainty should be raised with a teacher, not decided by hiding the material. |
Ordinary lending of a book or other resource is different from giving another candidate access to material used as your own independently sourced evidence. The latter takes over part of the independent research process. A shared centre-provided pack is also different: candidates may choose independently from a permitted pack.
Acknowledgement matters, but it does not turn prohibited assistance into permitted assistance. The final work must still be the candidate's own. The same principle applies to AI: if AI-derived material is unacknowledged or replaces the candidate's own assessed thinking, the ownership problem has not disappeared simply because a tool produced the words.
The 2027 CRF also requires confidentiality: assessed work may be shared only with the candidate's teachers and must not be posted online. Plagiarism can involve taking another person's ideas, reasoning or output as well as copying their exact words. A false authenticity declaration is itself malpractice.
Fictional case — Omar's shared folder. Omar has not signed a declaration. He uploads his draft investigation and a folder of source extracts that he independently located. Another candidate opens both. Omar has crossed two distinct boundaries: lending assessed work and allowing access to independently sourced material.
Before and after authentication
The key timing question is not when the problematic words were first written. It is whether the candidate had signed the declaration of authentication when the concern was identified.
| Point of identification | Official route for the content-of-work cases in this lesson |
|---|---|
| Before the candidate signs | The centre does not need to report the content-related incident to AQA. It follows its internal malpractice or plagiarism procedure and treats the matter seriously. The candidate should pause, disclose the concern to a teacher or exams officer and not sign a declaration they know would be false. |
| After the candidate signs | The head of centre must send full details to AQA at the earliest opportunity. JCQ/M1 is the form used for suspected candidate malpractice. The exams officer is part of the proper route; the candidate does not decide or submit the formal case alone. |
At both stages, the underlying ownership rule is unchanged. The centre records details of any work that is not the candidate's own on the Candidate record form or another appropriate place. Nobody should conceal the concern, rewrite the evidence of what happened, delete an audit trail, backdate an acknowledgement or manufacture a more convenient record.
Current JCQ procedure makes an important qualification: the pre-signing no-report exception concerns candidate offences relating to the content of the work, such as copying, collusion, plagiarism or AI misuse. Other breaches, such as some breaches of assessment conditions or confidential material, may still require reporting. This lesson's cases are deliberately limited to content-of-work concerns; a real uncertainty belongs with the teacher, exams officer and current official procedure.
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