2. Before you start your HSC

2.1 Maintaining honesty and integrity

Honesty is key for all students and staff

The honesty of students in completing assessment tasks, exams, and tests underpins the integrity of the HSC. Students, teachers and others who guide them are responsible for knowing and complying with NESA’s rules regarding malpractice. These rules are outlined in this guide and across related NESA policies including those for All My Own Work, Course completions, HSC minimum standard, and HSC practical exams. You should also read your course syllabus for course specific requirements.

You must be honest when completing all your school-based assessment tasks, exams and submitted works.

Always acknowledge your sources

You must acknowledge any part of your work that was written, created or developed by someone other than you. This includes any material from other sources, for example:

• books
• journals
• electronic resources
• the internet.

For practical works, this includes work undertaken by others.

You do not need to formally acknowledge material that you learnt from your teacher in class.

2.2 Understanding malpractice

Cheating of any kind is unacceptable

Malpractice, otherwise known as cheating, is any attempt to gain an unfair advantage over other students. Malpractice in any form including plagiarism, collusion, misrepresentation and breach of assessment conditions is unacceptable. We treat allegations of malpractice very seriously and there are significant penalties for detected malpractice in HSC exams. If you are found to have engaged in malpractice in your HSC exam, it may result in penalties such as a reduction in marks and the cancellation of courses leading to the possible loss of your HSC. Serious and deliberate acts of malpractice amount to corrupt conduct and may be reported to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Some examples of malpractice are: 

• copying part or all of someone else’s work and presenting it as your own
• using material directly from books, journals, the internet, or any other offline/online resources, without acknowledging the source
• unauthorised use of generative AI (artificial intelligence) tools
• building on someone else’s ideas without acknowledging the original source
• buying, stealing or borrowing someone else’s work and presenting it as your own
• submitting work that someone else, eg a parent, tutor or subject expert, substantially contributed to
• using someone else’s words, ideas, designs or work in projects and performance tasks without mentioning the source
• paying a third party to produce or prepare material and presenting it as your own
• not acknowledging any work completed by others for your submitted work or performance
• breaching school exam rules
• cheating in an HSC exam
• using non-approved aids in a school-based assessment task
• giving false reasons for not handing in work by the due date
• helping another student to engage in malpractice

• providing fraudulent evidence in applications for disability provisions or illness/misadventure

• being responsible for actions done or omitted to be done that confer an unfair advantage relating to the outcome of any HSC exam – irrespective of whether such actions occur before, during or after such an exam or assessment.

You might need to prove your work is your own

If you are suspected of plagiarism, you will need to show that all unacknowledged work is entirely your own. You might need to:

• prove and explain your work process with diaries, journals, notes, working plans, sketches or progressive drafts that show how your ideas developed
• answer questions about the assessment task, exam or submitted work being investigated to show your knowledge, understanding and skills.