TreeHouse International School will continue to nurture high standard learning that will meet all IB learning standards. Within our IB DP framework, our educators will aim to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who are motivated to succeed. Through the DP core, students reflect on the nature of knowledge, complete independent research and undertake projects that often involves community service.
The Academic Integrity policy purpose is to ensure responsibility and trust within the school’s learner community. It is a tool for protecting intellectual property and a promise for taking production of legitimate, authentic and honest scholarly work. When submitting writing, students need to provide appropriate credit and citation of sources used within the academic work. Students will be taught how to acknowledge their resources, to avoid plagiarism and support the original works of different authors and researchers.
Academic Integrity includes ethical behavior within the school campus and to embody its principles at independent work/research outside of the school as well. Our school community is expected to support the development of authentic work and the school’s guidance in the matter. Protecting intellectual property includes:
- Providing credit/citation to original sources of information.
- Recognition of authorship and ownership of creative work.
- Proper conduct of exams.
- To acknowledge peers’ input in submitted work.
- Production of authentic work that includes different forms of intellectual/creative expressions (copyrights, trademarks, registered designs, rules/principles of academic citation).
Understanding the above principles includes promises to avoid malpractice and plagiarism:
Avoiding Academic dishonesty
THIS students and teachers must understand the importance of legitimate scholarly assessments and assignments. Academic dishonesty results in unfair advantage or misguided publish of authentic work. Academic dishonesty includes:
- Plagiarism, being the intentional/unintentional representation of information and ideas of other people/sources as one’s own.
- Malpractice, being a gain of unfair advantage when submitting academic work due misconduct of acknowledging intellectual property.
- Collusion, including copying other peers’ work not crediting peers’ input.
- Duplicating work, may it be within the different learned subjects (e.g. same work submitted for two different DP core subjects) or of duplicating work of different students.
- Usage on unauthorized material or tools (e.g. an unauthorized calculator during an examination).
- Disrupting examination processes.
- Parents assisting students’ submitted works or examination.
- Impersonating other students.
- Sharing school’s material without the school’s consent within or outside of school.
- Failing to follow school’s team instruction when conducting examination or guiding submitted work.
- Stealing school’s material.
Usage of AI
- IB subjects policy: The IB believes that artificial intelligence (AI) technology will become part of our everyday lives—like spell checkers, translation software and calculators. Accordingly, IB DP students may use these new AI tools ethically and effectively. The IB is not going to ban the use of such software but will work with schools to help them support their students on how to use these tools ethically in line with our principles of academic integrity.
- AP subjects policy: Currently the use of Artificial Intelligence tools is categorically prohibited at any stage of the creative process. Furthermore The College Board, which administers Advance Placement (AP) courses, states on their website that the 2023-24 guidance for artificial intelligence tools and other services is being evaluated and will be updated later this fall.
Responsibilities and roles
Student Responsibilities:
THIS students are expected to embody ethical behavior that will ensure authentic evaluation and practice. To have a clear understanding of the importance of proper academic research and accurate credit of work. Any doubts of authorship or acknowledgment of sources should be advised with the responsible teachers beforehand. Students should comply with school’s deadlines and any delay should be approved by the appropriate teaching leading members. Students need to provide proper acknowledgment of original authorship while avoiding academic misconduct. Any cases of malpractice should be reported to the school immediately in order to keep a culture of trust and academic honesty.
Parent responsibilities
Parents should review the mentioned principles and rules of the academic integrity policy. It is within the parents’ responsibility to enable practice of ethical work. To report to the school on behaviors of misconduct and to encourage a culture of mutual trust.
IB coordinator responsibilities
THIS IB Coordinator is responsible to supervise the conduct of proper academic work within the DP programme. To understand the different procedures that enable production of authentic examination and study. The IB Coordinator must understand the definition and principles of academic integrity. To guide the practice of academic honesty while providing teachers with materials and information sessions – facilitating meetings. It is within the IB coordinator duty to conduct an investigation of academic dishonesty when notified or noticing a case of academic dishonesty. To maintain mutual understanding within the school community of consequences when submitting dishonest work.
Teacher responsibilities
THIS teachers must understand the values and importance of academic integrity. To guide students to provide academic writing that properly acknowledges the input of sources of information. To foster students study skills and research. It is within the teachers’ responsibility to review if the work submitted to them meets the requirements of academic integrity and honesty. To monitor testing environments and to check usage of accepted tools (e.g. usage of authorized calculator). All school’s departments must support and maintain an environment of ethical behavior and trust.
Consequences of misconduct
- Conducting an investigation.
- Informing parents
- Intervention with students
- IB coordinator reports the case to the IB
- Recording the incident within the school’s documents.
- Sanctions as following
Monitoring
Teachers are responsible to guide students in the formation of academically honest practices. It is important for students to understand the importance of monitoring work they submit beforehand in order to meet expectations of academic honesty. To ensure authentic work, our teachers are monitoring exams and works using a variety of methods to prevent malpractice: The following includes traditional in-person proctoring and monitoring as well as usage of variety of technological methods including Plagiarism checker software (e.g. Plagiarism Checker by Grammarly or GPT-2 Output Detector).
IB’s monitoring processes
Assessment is a critical component of the educational process that enables teachers to monitor and evaluate the understanding of learned content. Any possible case of a student’s academic misconduct will be reported to the IB in order to review. The IB will consider any source of valuable information given including samples of work or review of responses of examination papers.
Session monitoring covers actions as checking all available pieces of work in IB systems for plagiarism, overlap in content or checking response patterns to examination papers, including multiple-choice questions.
When THIS identifies issues with a final piece of work before submission/upload to the IB prior the IB submission deadline, the situation must be resolved as per this academic integrity policy. Resubmission of students’ work are permitted according to the teachers’ instructions as well as orders from the pedagogical leadership. Works should be reviewed first by expectations regarding academic integrity. If a final piece of work has plagiarized information or fails to meet the subject guide requirements, that component will either:
- Receive a score of “F” on the IB internal mark entry system
- Be marked as non-submission in the case of externally assessed components, such as the extended essay, or theory of knowledge essay
An investigation/meetings should take place, as a consequence for the action. Students may not be eligible for a final grade in the subject of concern. As well as the IBDP programme coordinator will inform the IB as soon as an academic misconduct is identified after submission of work to the IB.
The school has the responsibility to maintain examination security, including on-screen, oral and written examinations: The IB appoints independent invigilators to oversee the conduct of examinations. Examinations may be sent electronically in case of need. The school is responsible to secure storage examination material and share information in appropriate time. THIS follows the instructions for the conduct of examinations according to the IB guidelines and expectations. THIS students should embody ethical and honesty practices and meet expectations in terms of the conduct of the written/on-screen examinations. Students should follow staff instructions when entering examination rooms and not bring any unauthorized material. Any case of a student bringing any unauthorized material to examination (regardless the intent or use) or breaching regulations (e.g. follow staff instructions) will be reported to the IB within 24 hours. Student should be escorted outside of examination room according to instructor’s saying. Examination script should be submitted for assessment as usual.
Investigation of student academic misconduct cases: Upon evidence proving to the IB of academic misconduct, the school will conduct an investigation that provides statements/ documentation from all parties involved. Removal of piece of work from the relevant session or providing no grade to the subject(s) concerned, will be decided upon the IB and the School. In case the school/IB decides the student should retake the subject in a future session, they cannot include the work that was under investigation. In case of suspected academic misconduct, the student must be invited to present a written statement that addresses the suspicion of academic misconduct. Investigation will proceed and will be referred to the IB responsible offices and experts.
Appeal Process & Sanctions
The IB & school may investigate matters that could constitute academic misconduct. When investigating misconduct, evidence and statements from all involved parties are obtained. Each case is assessed according to the available evidence and any sanctions will be taken according to the list of consequences of malpractice. If the evidence is inconclusive, subject matter experts will be consulted. Students have the right to appeal against the claim of dishonesty. They may apply the case in writing to the DP coordinator who will review the evidence and will take actions accordingly.
Before appealing students and their guardians are encouraged to:
- Read the school’s integrity policy
- Review the list of consequences of malpractice
Consequences of malpractice:
Internal Sanctions:
- First Offense: The IB coordinator will discuss the case with the student. The misconduct will be noted in the school records as parents and DP Teachers will be notified. The parents will receive a written warning, as they will be advised to review the Integrity policy. The student will be required to re-do their work.
- Second Offense: Cancelation of the grade of the work. DP Teachers and parents will be notified of the case of second offense.
- Third Offense: The matter of the case and the decision will be discussed among the student, their parents, teachers and head of school.
External Sanctions:
By registering the school IB Diploma Programme, the students must recognize the authority of the IB to apply sanctions, including withdrawal of services, if the organization believes academic misconduct has occurred. In case of academic misconduct within an IB-assessed component, the IB may investigate the matter. To assess the case and determine a sanction, the IB uses the matrix of penalties. Based on the penalty matrix each case will be judged according to the available evidence and may be consulted with subject-matter experts if not conclusive. The table of penalties is detailed in the appendices within the IB Academic Integrity Policy and sets out the level of penalty—1, 2, 3a or 3b—that will be applied for each type of academic misconduct.
Resources to support the policy:
- H.I.S. Students Handbook
- H.I.S. Teacher Handbook
- org (IB Academic Integrity Policy)
- Plagiarism Checker by Grammarly
- GPT-2 Output Detector
Policy Development
This policy was written in alignment with the IBDP Programme standards and practices. The school policies are reviewed annually by the school coordinator, teachers and school administration. Our school policies are available online and are communicated within our community via the processes described
- School policies are available on the school website at: https://www.treehouse.co.il/
- School policies are also distributed/explained within the school’s Student/Teacher Handbooks
- The IB coordinator provides documentation to the IB teachers with regard to the latest IB principles and practices.
- School policies are communicated with parents during Forum/Parents meetings.
- Information regarding latest school updates will be provided via email/publications within our social media accounts.
- Students are informed of school policies and procedures throughout the school year.
For more information about the IB standards and procedures please visit the The International Baccalaureate® (IB) official website:
