Although my profile subject is computer science I also had to write at least a dozen of essays. And although it was difficult for me, it allowed me to broaden my skills in writing.

Preparing to another long year of teaching at school I made a thorough research about essays. Apparently most of our students don’t like them the same way as I did. But conversely to my experience, they don’t see it as a chance to improve their writing skills, they see it as useless waste of time. Hence they buy essays online from so-called essay writing services.

To tell you the truth, I cannot say that I was shocked to my very core, the modern world varies from the one we used to study in. Modern kids take education for granted while we knew that this was the only chance to get a good job and develop yourself professionally.

The so-called writing services “guarantee” A-level papers written by native-speakers only. They claim to cover almost all subjects from Biology to English literature. I searched through some forums to see who could be interested in writing such papers. To my big surprise the people claimed to write these papers are professors and teachers from the most prestigious universities in UK, USA, Australia etc. The services explain that the professors and teachers are working for them to get extra cash, which is very doubtable as the average work cost about $15-20 per piece.

According to the recent article published by The Guardian, the UK exam regulator Ofqual claims that such papers deliver shoddy works plus putt students at risk of being cut cheating.

The exam said that one part of the essays “reads as unengaged floundering and untutored student” while others surprise with high quality and professionalism. Can it be that students have been fooling us all this time? And is there a way to see if students bought the piece?

According to the above mentioned article we, teachers, should look for the basics:

• The change of writing style
• Inability to retell the essay
• Inability to discuss the essay
• The gap in knowledge

The most popular services you should be aware of are buyessayscheap (you can see their website here), college-writers (you can see their website here) and essaytigers (look through their website)

Please comment below if you have come across essay cheating. It would be great if you could suggest how to identify such papers.