What is attendance fraud?
Recording of physical attendance at teaching events is an important part of our student engagement monitoring
Students are required to record attendance at campus based, timetabled event by scanning their ID cards at a touchpoint scanner in the room. It is important this data is accurate for regulatory reporting (including UKVI checks for students with visas) and to allow us to identify attendance problems that may need support for individual students and for modules or courses
Examples of fraudulent behaviour related to attendance monitoring include:
- Scanning someone else’s card so they appear to attend the session when they did not attend
- Asking another student to scan your card so it appears you attended sessions you did not attend
- Scanning your card and then leaving the venue without attending the class
- Any other action intended to deceive the University about attendance
Consequences of attendance fraud
Fraudulent behaviour may be in breech of the general regulations and may have serious consequences for students, including:
- Action via the Student Disciplinary Process, which may result in a formal written warning and/or a £100 fine for both the person tapping in and the person on whose behalf it was done.
- If it recurs it might also lead to expulsion from the University for both students.
- Any fraudulent activity linked to registering attendance may also be reported to funding bodies, sponsors and, in the case of visa students, the United Kingdom Visa and Immigration office (UKVI).
Who should you talk to if you suspect attendance fraud
If academic staff think fraud is taking place, please discuss with your Course Director, Associate Head of School for Student experience or other academic manager what action to take.
Any instances where academic colleagues identify attendance fraud should be reported to the Associate Head of School for Student Experience or equivalent. They will collate this information so we can report on the issue across the organisation. They will also determine if students will initially get an informal warning and if the issue persists they may take more formal action.
Checks by Registry Staff
For a sample of teaching events, registry colleagues will be checking individual ids for students entering sessions and carrying out cross checks of numbers in rooms and numbers who have scanned into touchpoint to help identify possible issues
At the start of the semester/ block, the checks will result in students being reminded about the regulations and issued with warnings. We hope in most cases this will prevent further issues.
If students persist with fraudulent behaviour, disciplinary action may be taken.
Academic staff actions to help prevent attendance fraud
Ensure your students understand about attendance monitoring and fraud
Students receive information about attendance monitoring during induction, but this needs to be reinforced regularly by course teams
This is a link to the Student guide to attendance monitoring
Flag sessions where you think fraud may be commonly happening
Academic staff should flag to their Course Director any sessions where they believe
attendance fraud may be commonly happening so we can include them in our checking
process
Check if attendance fraud is taking place?
There are a number of ways you can check for fraud including:
Stand next to the scanner at the start of the class and talk to anyone who has more than one card to scan or who scans then tries to leave.
Open the attendance information in Sonic during the class and see how many people scanned in and cross check this with a manual count.
Check the Sonic information after class to see how many people scanned in versus how many you counted manually (but please remember than the morning after class the information may be updating and may show incorrectly for a few hours until the data refresh is complete)
Instructions for checking attendance on Sonic are linked here
How you can collect evidence to check which students are really present in class to compare with those scanned in on Sonic
In small classes you may know the students individually and you can make a list of who is
present or tick them off on a register (you can download registers from Sonic)
If you don’t know all the students, or it is a larger group, you can hand round a printed
register for the class (you can download registers from Sonic) or a piece of paper and ask
each student to write their name- warn students you are counting how many are in the
room and only expecting that number of names on the list.
This may be more difficult in very large events such as lectures. For these events the Associate Head of School or other academic manager can discuss with Registry if help can be provided with addressing issues in these events.
Sonic and attendance monitoring guidance documents for academic staff
Academic guidance on Sonic Attendance Monitoring System
Academic Guidance on Touchpoint and Attendance
