At The Correspondence School, New Zealand, cheating the way you describe in this post is always viewed seriously.

We have a significant component of our senior secondary assignments that are for internal assessment towards New Zealand Certificate of Education (NCEA). The NZ university Entrance is also based on NCEA assessments.

In Science, we draw the distinction (sensibly I think) between what would be considered plagiarism and what can be considered ‘legitimate copying’. To unpack what I’ve just said here, when a student is assessed in a so-called open-book assessment, an amount of copying (cut and paste whether digitally or with scissors and glue) is perfectly acceptable provided the content is appropriate and relevant. It may well be, for instance, that a student has chosen to use a particular method for a chemical analysis (say) and pastes the procedure directly into their report. That’s acceptable up to the point where they start discussing their own findings, etc. BUT beyond that, plagiarism (as it is commonly understood) is out. This applies to copying other students’ work as well as any Internet copying – data, result handling/collating, discussion, conclusion.

What’s more, students are made well aware

(a) what’s meant by copying and
(b) the consequences of copying in submitted assignments.

Frankly, I think it’s part of education to teach young learners what plagiarism is and the ethical and moral shades of grey that are implied by plagiarism. It is just as important to know when copying is appropriate as it is to know when it is not.

Catchya later