Exam papers will be tagged this summer using radio frequency identification (RFID) to crack down on cheating.

Exam board Edexcel will install the tags in some of its 620,000 bags of exam papers, which will tell it how many paper should be inside each bag and whether the bag has been opened before the exam begins.

Edexcel marks more than 13 million papers a year, and in 2006 over 70 security breaches were reported with papers often stolen and sold.

Incidents involving stolen papers are rare, says Edexcel managing director Jerry Jarvis, but the potential impact is huge.

‘The logistics of re-issuing an alternative paper to schools and colleges around the country and re-training markers on the new paper are complicated, costly and could ultimately be detrimental to candidates,’ he said.

‘This is a major trial of new technologies with the aim of deterring potential thefts, enabling us to better identify the source of a lost or stolen paper, and reducing the threat of fake papers being sold to candidates.’

RFID tags will be installed on a number of bags containing papers and will be scanned on dispatch and again by Edexcel’s compliance team to ensure no papers are missing.

It is also using technology to detect anomalies in exam results for individual or groups of students. Some 90 per cent of exams are scanned, digitised and marked online by examiners using its ePen system.

Responses and subsequent results are captured digitally, enabling the online system to flag if a candidate has performed significantly out of line with expectations.

It can then be accessed instantly and checked manually by the senior examining team for evidence of cheating.