Jeffrey Beard, the head of one of the world's most respected assessment organisations - the International Baccalaureate (IB) - has been caught red-handed passing off someone else's work as his own.The Geneva-based director general of the IB has been publicly named and shamed by an American academic institution where he made a speech that it has discovered "was not original work".Mr Beard gave a talk on "Education for a Better World" last month at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State.

It appears that Mr Beard broke one of the golden rules of cheating - if you're going to do it don't be too obvious. In using material from Sir Ken, he picked on a world-renowned US-based British educationalist who has had one of his talks viewed more than 1.5 million times on the internet."Mr Beard neglected to cite his source or reveal the quotations for what they were. Yesterday's speech was not original work," the statement continued.The IB's own guide for schools on academic honesty defines plagiarism as "the representation of the ideas or work of another person as the candidate's own".

This week an IB spokeswoman said: "On reflection, Mr Beard thinks that he could have been more explicit about the sources and authors that inspired him for the content of this speech."She said he had drawn from "a number of sources", including Sir Ken Robinson, but "it was never Mr Beard's intent to imply that the ideas were his alone"."If this had not been a speech, but a scholarly or academic paper, he would have made a complete list of all references available," she said.The Chautauqua Institution was not impressed and has withdrawn the speech from its website and bookshop. Its statement ends: "Mr Beard's behavior in this matter is not characteristic of the work done here at Chautauqua and violates the expectations you should have for that work. We acknowledge to you our genuine disappointment in this event."

There are no statistics about how many Afghan girls masquerade as boys. But when asked, Afghans of several generations can often tell a story of a female relative, friend, neighbor or co-worker who grew up disguised as a boy. To those who know, these children are often referred to as neither “daughter” nor “son” in conversation, but as “bacha posh,” which literally means “dressed up as a boy” in Dari. Through dozens of interviews conducted over several months, where many people wanted to remain anonymous or to use only first names for fear of exposing their families, it was possible to trace a practice that has remained mostly obscured to outsiders. Yet it cuts across class, education, ethnicity and geography, and has endured even through Afghanistan’s many wars and governments.

There are no specific legal or religious proscriptions against the practice. In most cases, a return to womanhood takes place when the child enters puberty. The parents almost always make that decision.

A bacha posh can also more easily receive an education, work outside the home, even escort her sisters in public, allowing freedoms that are unheard of for girls in a society that strictly segregates men and women.