AS thousands of young people prepare for the exam season, one of the country's biggest exam boards has revealed an electronic tagging system to crackdown on cheating.

Edexcel which is responsible for 13 million exam papers a year, will enforce a number of new technological security measures throughout England.

This move to catch out cheats follows the theft of a maths A'Level paper last summer.

The examination officer at Baston School for girls, Baston Road, Hayes, Claire McConkey believes that the security of exam papers is paramount and the school is happy to comply with any new measurements the exam boards deem necessary.

She said: "There was one incident when our exam papers were delivered to the school across the road in error.

"The exam board was able to track down our GCSE papers which luckily, had not been opened by the recipients."

Radio frequency tags, similar to the security tags you find on clothing are being placed in every bag of exam papers.

The tags store data such as how many papers are in the bag, where the papers were dispatched from, where they are going to, and if the bag has been interfered with along the way.

In addition, the examination boards name will be printed on each paper in micro text, a new and distinctive printing technique which is invisable to the naked eye, used to detect photocopied papers.

Edexcel are also keen to crack down on plagiarism by checking layouts in the exam to identify copying.

Results will be compared against predicted grades to spot unusually good performances which could indicate cheating.

Mrs McConkey said: "Exam papers are placed into a safe in a locked room, for which only I have the key for."

She added: "As for during the exam, we have very strict rules that the girls are not allowed to take any personal belongings, especially mobile phones into the exam room.

"The exam boards instruct us to automatically to disqualify them if they are caught with one."

Last year Exdecel dispatched 620,000 bags of exam papers and received 70 reports of security breeches.

In an interview on the BBC radio, Edexcel's managing director Jerry Jarvis said: "We're doing a major trial of new techniques 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."