A 52-year-old Frenchwoman has been caught sitting a crucial pre-university English examination in Paris in her 19-year-old daughter's place., reports The Telegraph.
Dressed in "elaborate make up", low-waisted jeans and Converse shoes, the mother made the brazen attempt at cheating this week to help her daughter secure her Baccalauréat – France's A Level equivalent examination.
The failed subterfuge came just after French education authorities vowed to clamp down on cheating in school examinations, by, for example, installing electronic smart phone detectors.
The efforts of the mother, known only as Caroline D, would have paid off had it not been for the eagle eyes of an invigilator.
As the exam centre was not at her daughter's high school and some adult students also sit the exams, the mother managed to enter the exam hall without arousing suspicion and laid out her pens and paper beside the other young examinees.
But a supervisor realised something was amiss as she remembered seeing her daughter Laetitia sitting a philosophy exam a few days earlier at the Lycée Bossuet-Notre Dame in Paris.
Her hunch was confirmed when she glanced at the candidates' ID cards and she tipped off the headmaster, who informed the local police.
Instead of stopping her, however, school officials decided to allow the fake student to sweat out most of the three-hour composition test.
"Intervening during the exam could have disturbed the other candidates, and created a reason to cancel the test for everyone," a representative from the school told Le Parisien.
According to another school staff member, four plainclothes police officers arrived at the school, and an exam supervisor quietly escorted her from the hall.
Read more of this report from The Telegraph.