Top Wolverhampton school plummets to bottom of league tables

St Peter's Collegiate in Wolverhampton is shown as having no pupils achieving the benchmark of five A*-C grades including Maths and English, meaning it drops to 19th position in the tables down from eighth

It comes after the Government changed the way results are recorded.

The Compton Park school entered pupils into GCSE English Literature and GCSE Combined English exams which had overlapping content.

Under new Department for Education rules, the results are therefore void when calculating the tables. Pupils' individual results are unaffected.

Acting principal reverend Steve Walters described the situation as 'ridiculous'.

He said: "More than a year after our students started their GCSE courses, the government decided to change the rules on how performance tables reported GCSE results.

"As a result, the tables show both the 5A*-C including English and Mathematics measure and the English Baccalaureate measure for St Peter's Collegiate School as 0 per cent. This is ridiculous.

"Despite strong and prolonged discussion with the Association of School and College Leaders, the support of our MP and correspondence with the Department for Education, the government has refused to reverse its decision. We are deeply disappointed. Parents rely on official data to make decisions in the best interests of their children. We believe parents and children have been let down and misled by the decision to publish this data.

"We have taken action in response to the government's change in rules. Students in the current Year 10 and 11 are following a different pathway, to try to ensure that no results are discounted in future.

"In addition we have increased the rigour of the tracking system in order that speedy action can be taking to provide support for students who are underachieving."

Reverend Walters said the school's 'true' result saw 65 per cent attained 5 or more A* to C grades including both English and mathematics

A Department for Education spokesman said: "As part of our plan for education we are making GCSEs more ambitious and putting them on a par with the best in the world, to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain.

"We have made important changes to a system that rewarded the wrong outcomes. We have stripped out qualifications that were of little value and are making sure pupils take exams when they are ready, not before."