Wellingborough teacher ‘under pressure’ to falsify 9,000 pupil absence records is allowed to stay in profession

A senior Wellingborough school teacher who falsified attendance data has been allowed to stay in the profession after a ruling by the regulator.

Paula Tucker was assistant principal of attendance and behaviour at Weavers School when in October 2019, errors in absence data were flagged-up by colleagues.

It was discovered that Mrs Tucker had changed codes on the electronic school – codes used to flag-up potential safeguarding issues around long-term truancy.

The false codes were discovered when official data showed students had an attendance rate of 104 per cent equating to more days than the number of days in a school year.

Making their decision, Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) member Sarah Buxcey said: “I have concluded that a prohibition order is not proportionate or in the public interest.

"I consider that the publication of the findings made would be sufficient to send an appropriate message to the teacher as to the standards of behaviour that were not acceptable, and that the publication would meet the public interest requirement of declaring proper standards of the profession.”

The panel heard that Mrs Tucker had changed the ‘B’ and ‘D’ codes on the SIMS register retrospectively, under pressure from a senior unnamed colleague.

A total of 9,437 changes were made by Mrs Tucker, mostly during the school holidays when records were reset when detection was less likely.

One of the witnesses called discovered a total of 163 students’ codes had been changed, and 11 had their attendance improved by the changes sufficiently to bring their attendance above 90 per cent, meaning they were no longer considered ‘persistently absent’ in the school’s data.

Changing the codes for pupils showed them to be at an ‘offsite educational activity’ when in fact they were not.

The same witness said that some of the student’s codes who had been changed had educational needs or were ‘very vulnerable’, and he perceived that the changes meant they were not getting the required support.

Explaining her actions Mrs Tucker said had been asked to cover attendance and behaviour whilst a colleague was on temporary leave. She said she’d only had one training session on SIMS but it ‘did not cover coding’. The additional role greatly increased her workload and as a result she was under ‘significant strain’.

She had been told by a senior colleague she was to, ‘clean up the data, so that attendance would look better’. She also submitted that she ‘was told to change the data of students that had been off for some time and to go back as far as [she] could to bring the attendance level up’.

The panel heard that Mrs Tucker would be called most evenings around 10pm by the senior colleague and asked to make the attendance ‘look better’.

A month before she was fired, Mrs Tucker had been so ‘unhappy’ in her role that she made the decision to resign but her senior colleague ‘refused to acknowledge or accept it’.

Mrs Tucker explained she was ‘frightened’ of her colleague saying: “I felt trapped. I didn’t want to lose my job. I felt manipulated…. I knew I was being manipulated but I couldn’t say no.”

Screenshots of text messages to Mrs Tucker requesting phone calls late at night, often after 10pm were shown to the panel but no evidence presented by the TRA from the colleague in question who had declined to provide a witness statement.

Noting Mrs Tucker’s ‘hard work, dedication and enthusiasm for teaching’ the panel considered that the pressure exerted by her colleague could amount to ‘extreme duress’ with conduct that amounted to ‘significant intimidation’ and ‘placed pressure on Mrs Tucker to change the attendance data’.

The panel did not consider that there was evidence to demonstrate how prohibiting from teaching Mrs Tucker for a period of at least two years would serve any ‘useful purpose’.

They said: “Indeed, the panel considered that a prohibition order would be detrimental to the public interest. The panel therefore determined that a recommendation for a prohibition order would not be appropriate in this case.”

Stating that she understood the seriousness of her actions, she apologised that her actions ‘fell below the expectations of the teaching profession’.

Mrs Tucker said she will remain ‘mortified’ by her conduct and was ‘very sorry’ for the impact her actions have had on the TRA and could have had on pupils and the profession.

She added she will ‘never repeat her actions in the future’.

Back in 2022 a second Weavers teacher was found to have acted dishonestly after she lied about losing a folder of work that had not been completed.

A spokesman for Creative Education Trust (CET), that manages Weavers Academy, said: “Weavers Academy was under previous leadership during the timeframe this case covers.

“Any pressure to change attendance register codes is completely unacceptable to CET and does not align with our values.

“CET has recently made significant investments to improve attendance – including funding specialist teams dedicated to improving attendance across all our secondaries – and making meaningful progress in this area is an absolute priority for us.”

The spokesman added: “Weavers Academy was found to be ‘Good’ by Ofsted in May 2022 and that inspection, of course, involved scrutiny of attendance registers, and safeguarding was deemed to be effective.”