Inaccurate ETS test finds most English language test students 'cheated'

An automated test intended to flag cheating by foreign students doing English language tests to quality for UK visas proved highly inaccurate, resulting in political controversy.

ETS, the company that developed and run the language tests, used voice recognition software to detect whether the same voices turned up on multiple test recordings, indicating the same proxy had faked exams for several people. According to the final results, 97 percent of 58,000 Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) tests taken between 2011 and 2014 were judged suspicious - a figure widely regarded as implausible.

BBC Panorama first uncovered