Industry News
Targets 'driving teachers to cheat'
Posted on 7th December 2007
Five English schools had their national exam results stripped from them following allegations of cheating, but some are blaming the pressure of national testing and league tables for driving schools to such measures.
Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said teachers are under strong pressure to achieve targets and that the current system does not promote "professional integrity".
He said: "It just seems absurd to me that the Department for Children, Schools and Families can continue ignoring the howl of protest that is coming from the whole of the education community," the Guardian reports.
Martin Stephen, high master of St Paul's School, a leading private school, recently told the Times Educational Supplement that league tables are a "cancer on the face of education".
He said he hoped to withdraw his high-performing school from the league tables and encouraged other private schools to do the same.
© Adfero Ltd