A headteacher who produced false documents to mislead two pupils and their parents into thinking their GCSEs had been regraded, has been banned from teaching for life.
A Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel found that Christopher Terry’s actions were unacceptable professional conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute. It ruled that he acted dishonestly and with a lack of professional integrity.
The panel heard that Mr Terry, 46, had told parents of two pupils at Witchford Village College, in Cambridgeshire, that he was seeking to resolve problems with their GCSE results when this was not the case.
In both cases he falsely told pupils and their parents that their English language grade had been improved to a C.
On one occasion, he produced a letter for one of the pupils to give to higher education institutions to try to prove she had a C while he provided the other pupil with a “fraudulent print-out” of his grades with the English language mark amended.
Mr Terry had reassured the mother of one of the pupils that he was in contact with the exam board. But the panel noted he had admitted that this was not the case.
The TRA panel found that the former principal had failed to adequately respond to a complaint made by the mother of a female pupil about her GCSE results in 2015.
The pupil’s mother had originally complained that someone else at the school had failed to submit a medical appeal.
Mr Terry told the panel that he should have conducted a formal investigation rather than telling the pupil’s mother that he would deal with the matter personally.
In both cases Mr Terry told the pupils and their parents that their grades had been amended and that an updated English language certificate was expected.
The panel said it “considered that the ethical standards of the profession requires that the veracity of examination results should be beyond doubt”.
“The panel concluded that Mr Terry’s actions in misleading pupils and their parents regarding the true examination results demonstrated a clear lack of professional integrity,” the decision states.
The TRA recommended that he be banned from teaching for life. This recommendation was accepted by decision-maker Dawn Dandy on behalf of the education secretary.
Mr Terry had been the principal of Witchford Village College from September 2013 until December 2017, when he resigned for personal reasons.
The panel said that the parent of one of the pupils complained about her daughter’s results again in January 2018 and received a phone call the next day from the examination board saying it had no knowledge of Mr Terry’s involvement in the results.
