The former headteacher of a Clitheroe private school has been banned from the profession indefinitely, having falsified an exam result provided to a pupil.
Deborah Frost, who taught at Moorland School, was found at an employment tribunal held in February to have improperly amended the mark slip of a student and then told the parent that the error had occurred and was attributable to the exam body, OCR.
Ms Frost had begun working at the school in 2015 and became headteacher and exams officer in 2021.
In August 2022, the pupil received his exam results, which showed a mark of zero on the module of his Enterprise and Marketing coursework.
Evidence read out in the Teaching Regulation Agency hearing said the teacher who had been handed the coursework had left the school during the academic year, and his replacement did not accept that the work was the student's own, claiming that his father had helped him.
After this, the teacher left the school, and Frost was left to submit the marks, but left the student’s coursework in the safe, which she said was done in error.
After the issue was raised by the parent, Ms Frost tried to cover it up and sent an email to the parent where she doctored the original document to give a mark of 22.
During an interview with the OCR, Frost confirmed she falsified the statement.
The exam body subsequently wrote to the parent stating that “the revised statement of marks was not produced by OCR”.
In their report, the panel wrote: “The panel considered again the allegations which it had found proven. The panel noted that it found Ms Frost had effectively and deliberately fabricated a false document purported to contain exam results and provided it to the parent of a pupil.
“The panel noted that it found that Ms Frost had sought to create a false narrative with that parent in which she had suggested, again falsely, that a mistake had been made by the examinations board.
“The panel noted that Ms Frost was responsible for exams at the school and that she was the Headteacher. The panel had found Ms Frost’s actions to be dishonest and to lack integrity.
“The panel considered that failures of this nature constituted very serious misconduct and that, were teachers to behave like this in general terms, it would completely undermine the integrity of, and trust in, the examination process.”
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In light of the findings, the panel found that Ms Frost acted dishonestly and without integrity and there was a strong public interest consideration in upholding the standards of conduct in the teaching profession.
They also found that her actions were clearly deliberate and that there was no evidence to suggest that she was acting under extreme duress.
The report added: “The panel noted that Ms Frost had admitted the allegations and that she had expressed embarrassment and apologised for her actions within her interview with OCR.
“The panel also noted that whilst it had found Ms Frost’s actions to be deliberate, they did not appear to be actions from which she had anything to gain personally beyond the concealment of her previous actions.”
The panel concluded that prohibition was both proportionate and appropriate, which was agreed upon by the Secretary of State.
Ms Frost was issued with a prohibition order indefinitely, and she cannot apply for the order to be set aside until February 2029.
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