The Home Office was accused of presiding over a “shocking miscarriage of justice” by MPs during an urgent debate on the English language testing scandal which saw thousands of international students wrongly accused of cheating in an exam they were required to sit as part of their visa application process.
Those students who were wrongly accused of deception, many of whom were subsequently detained and deported, should now be helped to clear their names, shadow Home Office minister Stephen Kinnock told parliament.
About 2,500 students have been forcibly removed from the UK after being accused of cheating in the exam and a further 7,200 left the country after being warned that they faced detention and removal if they stayed.
Kinnock said the Home Office was not fit for purpose, adding that this case brought the department’s fundamental flaws into “one toxic combination of indifference and incompetence”.
New information unearthed by a BBC documentary has raised further doubts about the reliability of the evidence used by the Home Office to accuse students cheating in the tests. A BBC Newsnight investigation revealed that the Home Office has continued to try to remove students from the UK, despite being aware that there were flaws in the data provided as evidence of cheating.
Campaigners have been working since 2014 to help students fight the allegations, and the Home Office’s record on the English language testing scandal has already been the focus of a critical report by the National Audit Office.
The US firm Educational Testing Service (ETS) was licensed by the Home Office to operate a test to establish if overseas students had a high enough level of English to study in the UK. In 2014 undercover filming by Panorama uncovered organised cheating in two of the 90 Home Office-approved centres offering the exam. The government responded by asking ETS to assess whether the 58,459 tests taken between 2011 and 2014 were valid. The company made checks and concluded that 97% of the tests taken were suspicious.
Questions have repeatedly been asked about whether it was plausible that 97% of those who took the officially approved test could have been involved in cheating. The Home Office has faced criticism for allowing ETS to conduct the investigation into cheating allegations. Many students have protested their innocence and over 12,500 legal appeals against the Home Office decision to refuse visas on cheating allegations have been heard in UK courts; more than 3,600 people have won their appeals.
Shana Shaikh, 33, came to London from India to study for a masters in business in 2011. She was already fluent in English, having completed an undergraduate chemistry degree which was taught in English, but she was required to take the test in order to renew her student visa in 2014. She was accused of cheating in the exam and has subsequently spent about £20,000 on legal fees attempting to get the accusation overturned. In the seven years since the accusation was made, she has not been able to work, travel or study; she is still waiting for a decision on her case.
“I have been mentally destroyed by this accusation. I’m not able to get on with the rest of my life. I invested thousands of pounds to pay for a good education from this country. I’ve done nothing wrong, but I have been treated worse than a criminal,” she said. “I spoke very good English. I come from a very educated family, I wanted to do a PhD here. Why would I cheat in the test?”
Jakir Hussan, 35, came to the UK on a student visa from Bangladesh in 2009, and was accused of cheating after taking a test in 2014. He spent three months in an immigration detention centre, and has also spent over £20,000 on legal fees. “I came here with ambitions and dreams but my future has been destroyed,” he said. “Some relatives in my home country think that I did cheat; I feel ashamed and I lost ties with them. The most important thing for me is to clear my name so I can show my face to them.”
An ETS spokesperson said “several actions were promptly taken” after it was made aware of “serious allegations” involving test of English for international communication (Toeic) testing in the UK, which it said were conducted by third-party contractors. “ETS has cooperated with investigators … ETS shared our methodology and findings with the UK Home Office but did not make any recommendations in relation to the same, nor was ETS involved in determining how such information was utilised by the Home Office in its subsequent actions.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Courts have consistently found that the evidence we had at the time was sufficient to take action. We have made significant improvements to ensure large-scale abuse like this can never happen again. We have fixed the broken student visa system as it operated in 2014 and overhauled English language testing requirements.”
