A DARWEN school has hit out at the government’s exam league tables after seeing its placing drop the most in Lancashire in the last 12 months.

Principal Brendan Loughran said that Darwen Aldridge Community Academy’s performance in the tables, which were published on Thursday, did not accurately reflect the achievements of its former students.

He said that the school had been hard done by because the data only accounts for a student’s first attempt at a GCSE exam instead of their final result.

According to the newly published tables, the number of students gaining five or more A*-C grades at the school has gone from 64 per cent in 2013 to 33 per cent last year.

The percentage of Key Stage Four pupils achieving grades A*-C in both England and maths at the school was 34 per cent while the percentage of students taking all of the English Baccalaureate was 11 per cent.

Mr Loughran said: “The new performance tables can give a very different picture of a school from the overall examination record of its students.

“In actual fact 61 per cent of students achieved five or more A*-C grades and 80 per cent made at least the expected levels of progress in maths and 74 per cent in English.

“That is a true reflection of our students’ achievements, taking into consideration the result from their best entries and, most importantly, it is these final grades that matter to our students and to colleges, universities and future employers.

“The revised criteria for Department of Education performance tables don’t reflect the actual set of results students left school with this year.

“This has been acknowledged as the department is publishing two sets of data, one set which does not use the new criteria.

“We have ambitious plans for the future and are confident we will continue to see accelerated progress and a significant increase in results in the coming years, without the option to enable students to enter examinations early.

“It’s very frustrating for all of us here but we believe that we have made the correct moral choice for our students and our parents support us.

“It’s the final result that gets our students into university or where ever they want to go next and that’s what matters most to this school.”

Darwen Aldridge Community Academy replaced Darwen Moorland High School in September 2008, opening on the site of the former school at Holden Fold. The academy is supported by The Aldridge Foundation, and was officially opened by sponsor Rod Aldridge.