Teachers ‘invent’ pupil’s grades to climb school league tables

In one unnamed school teenagers deemed unlikely to gain a C grade were switched from two-year science GCSEs to B-tecs – courses which in the past were worth several GCSEs in league tables – with just six weeks of their studies to go.

Teachers were then put under pressure to do all they could to get the pupils to pass the B-tec course, including being pushed to make up results for teenagers who had not completed the work in time. The claims come in two papers being presented to the British Educational Research Association’s annual conference today and tomorrow.

Birendra Singh, a former 
science teacher and former Ofsted inspector who is completing a doctorate at the University of London’s Institute of Education, produced the papers after spending five years observing science departments in three London secondary schools.

The conference is also to be presented with new research today which shows that immigration and the recession have sharply reduced the levels of race and class segregation in English schools.

The rising numbers of people falling into economic hardship since 2008 has meant that pupils eligible for and claiming free school meals have become more evenly distributed across England’s school system, while a similar process has occurred with regard to children from minority ethnic groups.

Research led by Durham University found the policy of trying to educate more children with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream schools has helped reduce the degree to which schools differ in the proportions of SEN pupils they educate.

However, England appears to suffer from a “stubborn” underlying level of segregation for any indicator of disadvantage, say the researchers. And successive governments’ attempts to increase the number of types of school available to parents seem to be contributing to what segregation there is, as areas of England with many varieties of institution – from academies to faith schools and grammars – tend to be more segregated than those with greater proportions of community primary schools and “bog standard” comprehensives.

The findings come in major new studies analysing background data for pupils in all mainstream English state schools over the past quarter of a century.