{"id":381731,"date":"2025-12-31T03:16:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T03:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/381731\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T03:16:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T03:16:14","slug":"uk-accounting-body-to-halt-remote-exams-amid-ai-cheating-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/381731\/","title":{"rendered":"UK accounting body to halt remote exams amid AI cheating | Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world\u2019s largest accounting body is to stop students being allowed to take exams remotely to crack down on a rise in cheating on tests that underpin professional qualifications.<\/p>\n

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), which has almost 260,000 members, has said that from March it will stop allowing students to take online exams in all but exceptional circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing the sophistication of [cheating] systems outpacing what can be put in, [in] terms of safeguards,\u201d Helen Brand, the chief executive of the ACCA, said in an interview with the Financial Times.<\/p>\n

Remote testing was introduced during the Covid pandemic to allow students to continue to be able to qualify at a time when lockdowns prevented in-person exam assessment.<\/p>\n

In 2022, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the UK\u2019s accounting and auditing industry regulator, said that cheating in professional exams was a \u201clive\u201d issue at Britain\u2019s biggest companies.<\/a><\/p>\n

A number of multimillion-dollar fines have been issued to large auditing and accounting companies around the world over cheating scandals in tests.<\/p>\n

The FRC\u2019s investigation found that instances of cheating also included some tier-one auditors, a category comprising the \u201cbig four\u201d accountants \u2013 KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY \u2013 along with Mazars, Grant Thornton and BDO.<\/p>\n

In 2022, EY agreed to pay a record $100m (\u00a374m) to US regulators<\/a> over claims that dozens of its employees cheated on an ethics exam and that the company then misled investigators.<\/p>\n

The ACCA said it had concluded that online tests have become too difficult to police, given the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) tools available to students.<\/p>\n

Brand said the ACCA, which has more than half a million students, had worked \u201cintensively\u201d to combat cheating but \u201cpeople who want to do bad things are probably working at a quicker pace\u201d.<\/p>\n

She added that the rapid rise of technology, led by AI tools, had pushed the issue of cheating to a \u201ctipping point\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), which also trains accountants around the world, said reports of cheating were still increasing.<\/p>\n

However, the ICAEW still permits some exams to be sat online.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are very few high-stakes examinations now that are allowing [remote invigilation],\u201d Brand said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s largest accounting body is to stop students being allowed to take exams remotely to crack down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-381731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}