DD8 has had a couple of cheating episodes, all confessed to me, none caught by the teacher. She always picks someone who doesn't know the answers, which is how I catch her after the fact. For her, it happens when she feels most insecure. Cheating-related discussion doesn't seem to have an impact, but "you know what would happen if you got a zero? Absolutely nothing" appears to help.
I have a bad attitude towards school, which I can get away with because I have a rule-following kid, but she is *such* a rule-following kid that she could use a little bad attitude now and then. Plus, it helps her see that doing well in school is something she chooses, not something she's stuck with, and there's a huge mental difference between those things.
In our house, the school doles out punishment for school-related things, and that's the end of it. (Plus, "you aren't responsible for anyone's emotions but your own," is a useful life skill I'd like my kid to learn, but I have a girl, and girls are different.) We talk about how cheating doesn't further her enlightened self-interest (usually because it results in a lower grade, but it also erodes her confidence in herself to compare her answers to someone else's, and gets in the way of her learning), maybe.
Nine-year-olds are not fully-developed moral beings - they don't have the brain architecture or the life experience to be. That doesn't mean that they won't get there eventually.
