Louisa Yakit

Introduction

Louisa Yakit, head of the modern foreign languages department at Skinners’ Kent Academy, was banned from teaching in April 2025 after a Teaching Regulation Agency panel found she systematically cheated in the 2022 French GCSE speaking examinations she was examining. Across two days in May 2022, Yakit gave pupils impermissible “practice runs”, let them copy answers into their preparation notes, held up post-it prompts and mouthed answers during recordings, pointed pupils to marked answers displayed on her computer screen — and passed off “practice run” recordings as the real examination for pupils who were never invited back. The panel found the conduct dishonest under the Ivey test, calling it “cheating and fundamentally dishonest”, and the decision maker imposed an indefinite prohibition order with a two-year review period, remarking that Yakit’s decade of experience as a teacher-examiner made the cheating worse, not more explicable.

Background Information

Yakit was a very experienced modern foreign languages teacher: the panel noted she had ten years’ experience as a teacher-examiner for the French GCSE speaking test, was head of her department, and had a 16-year teaching career in which she had never previously needed her union. In May 2022 she conducted the AQA French GCSE speaking examinations at Skinners’ Kent Academy on 4 and 5 May, examining roughly twenty pupils across the two days — with two further pupils’ tests rescheduled. The rules she was operating under were unambiguous: candidates get exactly 12 minutes of supervised preparation; the teacher-examiner cannot point to notes or cards to prompt, cannot use “any form of non-verbal communication during the test, including visual aids, hand signals or pointing”, cannot reveal questions in advance, and cannot re-test a candidate during the speaking window. By spring 2022 Yakit was under real pressure — a parent had verbally abused her in front of pupils and her line manager, a colleague in her department had left, and she told the panel she felt unsupported by the school. The hearing in March and April 2025 was contested: she attended, was represented by Gurpreet Rheel of Cornwall Street Barristers, and gave live evidence.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. Yakit admitted the improper-assistance allegations but denied dishonesty; the panel found dishonesty proved. No criminal proceedings are recorded.

The panel accepted Yakit’s admissions on the assistance itself. In her written statement she admitted she “asked certain students to rewrite” their preparation notes, “provided more specific assistance by completing practice runs” with “most” of her pupils, and conceded in oral evidence that practice runs were not permitted. Pupil 7 described being told in the exam room to rewrite her notes copying from her lesson work; the panel heard she was stopped halfway through a first recording, told she “wasn’t good enough” and there was “no point in doing it now”, and recorded again. During recordings, Yakit admitted holding up post-it notes reading things like “future tense” or “question” to prompt pupils; Pupil 7 said one of two screens facing her displayed “fully marked answers to the questions, which [Ms Yakit] pointed to and [Pupil 7] could read off of”, while Yakit mouthed what to say. Written statements from pupils across both days consistently described post-it prompts and answers — Pupils 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 20, 21, 27, 28, 29 and 31 said she wrote prompts or answers on post-its for them.

On dishonesty, the panel applied Ivey v Genting Casinos and found Yakit knew the assistance was impermissible: two pupils said Yakit told them in the exam room that the exam board would need to be informed of the extra help — evidence “that Ms Yakit understood that such assistance was not permitted” — and Pupils 6 and 11 were told the recording they made was merely a “practice run” with a real test to follow; they were never invited back, and the panel was satisfied Yakit, as the teacher-examiner, knew the “practice” was the actual examination. Her ten years as an examiner, the manual she had with her in the room, and her admission she knew practice runs were banned all told against her. The panel concluded her conduct “had a clear intention to assist the candidates, which in the context of an examination was cheating and fundamentally dishonest”. In mitigation she described personal and professional pressures, and witnesses called her previously of good character — but the panel noted she “could not be described as a momentary lapse of judgment as her departure from the prescribed regulations recurred across a two day period with multiple pupils”, and that as head of department she could have sought a postponement or alternative examiner instead.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case received no national press coverage; the consequences are regulatory. The panel found breaches of the Teachers’ Standards on integrity and safeguarding duties and treated the exam misconduct as disqualifying, but expressly found the safeguarding public interest not engaged. It credited her “exceptionally high standards” prior to the exams and “significant” contribution to the education sector, heard from multiple witnesses to her teaching ability and good character, and noted her regret — she said she wished she “could have done things differently”, felt she “broke the trust” placed in her, and called it “a huge mistake”. Still, it found her insight incomplete as to consequences and the risk of repetition low but not nil, and concluded prohibition was justified “given the seriousness of the conduct found proven and her lack of full insight”. The panel noted she had committed to re-training and mentorship before any return to teaching. The exam irregularity itself was handled within the AQA/school framework; the published decision records no criminal proceedings.

Current Status

The panel’s determination is dated 4 April 2025. On 9 April 2025 Sarah Buxcey, the decision maker appointed by the Secretary of State, prohibited Yakit from teaching indefinitely: she cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. She may apply for the order to be set aside, but not before 9 April 2027 — two years from the date of the order — and only if a fresh panel agrees; the decision is explicit that this “is not an automatic right to have the prohibition order removed”. Buxcey accepted the panel’s two-year recommendation, weighing her passion for teaching and expressed regret against the need for public confidence. She retains a 28-day right of appeal to the High Court; no published record shows an appeal.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Yakit’s case is the regulator’s clearest recent statement that exam cheating by a trusted examiner is dishonesty, whatever the motive. The panel accepted she acted to settle nervous pupils rather than to game league tables, credited 16 years of good character, and still found “cheating and fundamentally dishonest” conduct sustained across two days and roughly twenty pupils — including pupils who never knew the recording they thought was a rehearsal was their real exam. A head of department who could have postponed the exams instead chose to run them herself and improvise assistance, and the decision maker rejected the mitigating context precisely because her experience meant she “would have been very familiar with the examination rules”. Her career now pauses for a minimum of two years, with any return contingent on persuading a fresh panel that a self-confessed cheat of one exam cycle has rebuilt the insight the first panel found incomplete.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Ms Louisa Yakit” — source