MORE than 20 pupils from a Spalding school are facing a last minute rush to redo coursework towards a Science Btec qualification after a problem was discovered with the way they had been taught.
The 15 and 16-year-olds from the Sir John Gleed School boys’ campus are being given extra support to improve their work after routine checks found that many of the assignments they had already submitted would result in them achieving much lower grades than the school believed them capable of.
The news comes just weeks after a teacher at Peele Community College, Long Sutton, was discovered to have falsified grades for GCSE English coursework which students had never been asked to do.
The headteacher Ian Charles is currently suspended from his duties amid concerns by the board of governors about standards of achievement.
The Gleed boys now have until the end of term, next month, to complete and submit their improved efforts.
Headteacher Janet Daniels said she was committed to ensuring all students achieved the best possible results and that was one of the reasons the students had been asked to do the work again.
She said: “When it came to doing a routine assessment of the coursework we started asking questions about why the students’ grades were so low and we found it was because the work was not good enough and that was because the teaching was not delivered to standard.
“We are now making them up their game. We are not blaming them for the problem, because it is clearly not their fault, but they now need to pull their fingers out to complete the work. I am sure they will rise to the challenge.
“We are at the end of the exam season now so they do not have too much else on their plates between now and the end of July so they can concentrate on what they need to do.
“There has never been any question of them completing the course, it’s just that we want them to complete it to as high a standard as possible and reach their target grades.”
Mrs Daniels confirmed that since the problem was discovered the teacher involved has been signed off work suffering from stress and will not be returning for the new school year in September.