Mrs Integrity

You are quite right Winston. This is not to do with grudges or disagreements with senior staff. It is about doing the right thing. Could any of the critics on here stand by and watch cheating without reporting it? What sort of lesson does this teach our children? The malpractice was not reported on the last day of term. It was reported to the exam board much earlier than that. The exam board wrote to the chair of governors on Thursday (the second to last day of term). The headteacher claims not to have details of the allegations but I know he was sent the reports by the exam board. He has many admirable qualities as a Headteacher but honesty is unfortunately not one of them. The school today was a hive of activity of people panicking and shredding documents - hardly the sign of unfounded allegations. I can only hope that the staff responsible for the cheating own up instead of attempting to cover up so that the matter is cleared up quickly and the pupils do not suffer further.

Our names have been withheld rather than being anonymous. The exam boards have chosen to keep us anonymous to protect us. It was the exam boards who leaked this to the press. None of the whistle blowers did. We had all agreed amongst ourselves that we would rather the exam boards investigated without it being made public. It is unfortunate that the exam boards did not see it this way. We made a report to the exam board at the beginning of last week. It was only after a meeting of all the exam boards that it has been publicised.

As one of the whistleblowers, I can say that this was not done maliciously. There are a large number of staff that have had concerns regarding cheating in exams and coursework for sometime. The Headteacher and Governors have been aware of this and have taken no action. The only course of action to put a stop to this was to involve the exam boards. It was not a decision taken lightly. Many of us who have given evidence feel that we did not enter teaching to achieve good exam results through cheating and that the actions of the school undermine the whole exams system. If any parents, pupils or staff wish to add evidence to the investigation, they should contact the exam boards. Contact details are on their websites (OCR, Edexcel, WJEC and AQA are the main ones).