Head jailed for three months for forgery

A former headteacher who admitted forging the test papers of pupils at two schools in Kent was jailed yesterday for three months.

Alan Mercer, 46, made alterations and added answers to national curriculum test papers taken by 11-year-olds at South Borough Primary School in Maidstone and Eythorne Elvington School in Dover. In some cases, Mercer added entire answers to pupils' papers.

He also altered answers on entry exams to help pupils at South Borough school win places at grammar schools.

Mercer, from Gillingham, Kent, pleaded guilty before magistrates in January to 14 offences of forgery. Sentencing him at Maidstone Crown Court, Judge Keith Simpson told Mercer the case was so serious that a custodial sentence was required. "If others were to act in a similar fashion, then the whole system would be immediately and utterly destroyed, and that cannot be allowed to happen," he said.

The court was told that Mercer would never return to teaching and was now working as an administrative assistant earning £8,000 a year and supplementing his income by working night shifts at a petrol station. Outside court, Philip Sayer, chairman of governors at South Borough, welcomed the imprisonment but argued that Mercer's offences deserved a longer sentence. "I hope that this will send out a message to schools everywhere that it's not right to mess about with children's efforts in this way," he said.

The school was placed at the bottom of the national league tables after its test results were declared void. There were 479 allegations of cheating in last summer's tests, according to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which runs the examinations. Seven cases led to results being annulled.