Officials challenged over poor arithmetic

Figures from the Department for Education (DfE) show the Mount, an independent Quaker school in York, has 32 per cent of pupils achieving five good grades including English in maths.

The school says the real figure is actually 94 per cent and is questioning the source of DfE data.

Jo Hayward, the school’s director of studies said that the DfE’s figures were so wide of the mark that more pupils achieved five straight A*s than the tables say achieved five A* to C grades.

“While we all applaud the work of the Department of Education, the figures they have provided for The Mount School’s GCSE results 2012 are demonstrably wrong,” she said. “So complete is the discrepancy, that I wonder whether our school is the victim of mistaken identity?

“Alarmingly, when I pointed out these very significant errors to the Department of Education on Tuesday and asked them to correct it before publication this morning, I was told that they would not review the information.”

Another school which can feel its performance is not reflected in yesterday’s tables is Pate’s Grammar School in Cheltenham.

The selective school is shown as the worst performing in the country with no pupils getting five A* to C grades including English and maths.

This was because the school, which saw all pupils achieve this standard last year, had used a new English exam which was not included in this measure, the DfE said.

Pate’s headmaster Russel Ellicott said: “We decided to move our English curriculum to an IGCSE, not currently counted in the league tables, because we decided that particular curriculum included a greater depth of learning.”