Integrity Management in High Schools: Paving a Way to Misconduct?

Studies show that bad practices developed at high school partially cause misconduct at university and extend towards workplace. Evidently, universities experience consequences of previously embedded behaviour such as using cribbing notes, irresponsible use of sources of information, or even contract cheating. The misconduct of a school student, living within such an environment for more than ten years, can hardly be considered the responsibility of the university in addressing the misconduct of a university student. Hence, universities are not fully able to handle misconduct and implement prevention-related activities due to the maturity of personality, i.e. entrenched individual values, beliefs and habits. Although this is explicit, integrity-related issues are rarely examined from a high school management perspective. In this regard, this paper aims to explore integrity management practices in high schools. We carried out a study, using qualitative content analysis, in high schools located in the capital city of Lithuania. Our sample consisted of all 32 public high schools (gymnasiums) on whose websites we identified over 130 publicly available policy documents in relation to the management of school students’ behaviour. Research findings show that there is no systematic approach how gymnasiums prevent and deal with misconduct that supposedly results in continuous bad practices in higher education.