Plagiarism

Plagiarism

Vocational Learning has a zero-tolerance when it comes to plagiarism and collusion. Plagiarism refers to passing other people’s work as your own. This is simply cheating or fraud which is taken by awarding bodies, Ofqual, Ofsted and many other regulators seriously. Your work will not been assessed. It will simply be returned to you.

Plagiarism can also have serious consequences to your job role, image and reputation. In the past a candidate who kept on plagiarising besides being warned ended up losing her job after the intervention of Ofsted. She was deemed to be unfit for practice. All her reports and recordings for 5 years where scrutinised as part of the investigation. She tried getting to get her union and solicitors involved to no avail. Her unfortunate circumstances were triggered by plagiarism.

It is therefore important that you take this seriously and acknowledge all your sources. Please do not just put a link at the bottom of your work. You need to identify all sources within the body of your work before or after when you start using other people’s words and work. We recommend you use Harvard Referencing which is compulsory for all level three and above courses.

Collusion
Please also desist from collusion. This is when you share work with others who then pass it as their on. This is simply another form of plagiarism which can have consequences for the original author and the copycat.

Candidates who plagiarise are at severe risk of being withdrawn from the course. They might also be reported to their employer (if they are funding your course) and any other relevant stakeholders.

Although we have a zero tolerance policy we diligently operate a warning approach before we instigate our policy.