Academic Integrity

Under any circumstance, it is strictly prohibited to plagiarise any material in any format. This includes books, websites, magazines, documentaries, audio files etc. Plagiarism is defined as using another source without correctly citing the source. If you write something and use any source in your research, this source must be listed in your citations. If you directly quote something from a different source, you must use quotation marks and an in-text citation to show the source.

Although under most circumstances quoting a source is alright, you should be wary that quoting pages of someone else’s work is not acceptable. Try instead to summarise the information which they have given. As a general rule, try to keep quotations to an absolute maximum of 3 sentences. Additionally, note that certain materials may not be distributed. For example, uploading an entire movie to your film analysis would be prohibited. Instead, you may reference these materials, such as “As seen in [name of movie]…” A good habit to avoid plagiarism is always recording any sources you use as soon as you access them. This way you will remember to cite everything which you used. If you use information from a previous paper which you have written, you must cite this paper – otherwise, you would be using information from sources of the last paper without crediting these sources. If you use content from the course, please remember to clearly state that you have done so. It is not allowed to directly copy course content, even in quotation marks. This is because the course may give you a direct answer to your problem, so we want you to write this answer in your own words. If you have learned something sometime previously, there is no need to state this. However, if it is not general knowledge, please remember to say that the information which is presented includes aspects which you already knew about from sources before the project.

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Most courses will include specific guidelines as to how you should cite sources within the course. It is strictly prohibited for you to resubmit an assignment to one course which has already been submitted in the same course/a different course. If it is a project which has been conducted outside of your school(s), then this may be submitted but this information should be noted and the other project cited. You are allowed to use a citation generator to help you with your citations if you wish.

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For world languages, it is strictly prohibited to use any form of online translator to complete your work. You may only use your course material and a dictionary in order to assist you with translation. On tests, you are not allowed to use any materials, not even your notes. Although we occasionally do allow dictionary use for world languages, please make sure that this is specifically noted. During tests, you may not use help from any outside reference materials, including your parents. We have advanced anti-plagiarism and cheating softwares in place, allowing us to quickly detect problems in academic integrity and plagiarism. If one of your tests has a problem with its academic integrity, this may result in expulsion from the course. If there are 3 problems with academic integrity across any courses, this will result in immediate expulsion from The4Network entirely. 

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Pinnacle Academy's academic integrity operates on a 3-strike system. 1 breach in academic integrity in a course will result in:

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• Re-evaulation of all previously submitted course materials in the course. 

  • If there is no other work found which is plagiarised, then you and your parents will need to meet with an enrollment adviser and your instructor in a call where we will discuss the problems with plagiarism. Your work in the course will be continuously monitored in a more stringent way to make sire plagiarism can be detected.​

  • If there is other work found which is plagiarised within the course, all previous courses will be checked. Any plagiarism breaches in any of these courses which previously went unnoticed will be graded with 0/total score. All schools to which transcripts have been sent from us will be informed of the academic integrity issue and will be sent a revised transcript which includes grades adjusted for the plagiarism in assignments. You and your parents will need to meet with all teachers of involved courses, our head of school and your enrollment adviser. Your work in the course and all other courses will be continuously checked against more stringent anti-plagiarism requirements.

• Possible expulsion from the course. Depending on the severity of the plagiarism found in this and other courses, the head of school will make the decision of expulsion from courses. Any current courses using plagiarised material will be considered in this, not only the one in which plagiarism was first detected.

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Your first breach is a strike when we first notice it and this strike counts all breaches before this event. After you have received one strike for all previous plagiarised work before the one in which plagiarism was noticed, one strike equates to one plagiarism breach. If another plagiarism breach is detected, all former work which has not been re-evaluated will be re-evaluated. Any assignment which includes plagiarism will equate to one strike. 

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Once 3 strikes are reached, you will be officially expelled from the school. Transcripts will be updated with zeroes for all plagiarised assignments. Courses which included breaches in plagiarism will be marked with a special symbol indicating this (a red circle). All schools to which transcripts have been mailed will be informed of the plagiarism and new transcripts will be sent.