The Register, the Marks and the Probation Report

Three requests, three different answers

1. The teaching record - cannot comply. A teaching record is an official school document that parents, the CRC and the district rely on to know what children have been taught. Back-filling dates for units that were never taught does not just mislead a visiting officer; it removes the only written trace of a real instructional loss, and the loss is never recovered because nobody plans for it. The instruction 'it is only for the visit' is the heart of the problem: the record exists for the children, and the visit is the secondary use.

2. Improved unit-test marks - cannot comply. Marks are a claim about what children can do. Inflating them misinforms parents and, worse, deletes the signal that would trigger help. If the school's average is the lowest in the cluster, that is a fact about teaching and attendance, not about arithmetic on a marksheet.

3. The answer key - negotiable. Lending the key for a colleague's own class is not inherently dishonest, but if the same paper is used across sections it compromises the fairness of the comparison the school is about to make. The practical answer is a parallel set of items or assessing her class after she has covered the portion. The deeper issue - her class has not finished - is the same data problem as request 2, and should be named as such rather than resolved by handing over the key.

The principle across all three: he may not create a document that says something untrue about children's learning, and he may not accept a risk to children's interests to protect an adult's convenience or the school's appearance.

The conversation

Private, short, solution-first, and without an accusation - the head teacher is also under pressure from the cluster average, and a public refusal will harden the position.

• Name the shared problem first: 'Sir, the November and December units genuinely did not happen - eleven days of polling duty and the polio round. The record needs to show that, or we will never get the time back.'
• Offer the alternative before the refusal lands: 'Give me the periods this month and I will write a recovery plan - which chapters, which periods, which outcomes I will drop to essentials. If you sign it, the record shows exactly what happened and what we did about it.'
• On the visit: 'If the CRP asks, we can show the plan and the recovery. That is a better answer than a filled-in record with nothing behind it.'
• Do not moralise and do not threaten. If pressed a second time, say plainly that he cannot put his initials against dates that are not true, and stop there.

The record and the recovery

• Maintain his own class record truthfully, with a dated note of the polling duty and the polio round as causes - facts, not blame.
• Write the recovery plan the same week: which chapters are non-negotiable, which periods will carry them, and what evidence will show they were taught.
• Keep a short dated note of the request and his response, for himself, not for circulation.

The risk

His probation report is in the head teacher's hands, and escalation is real but not free. The proportionate ladder is: private refusal with an alternative, then a written note to the head teacher, then the CRC/BRC or Block Education Officer if a falsified record is actually submitted in his name. He should take the first two steps before considering the third - and he should not sign anything in the meantime.

Refuse both, differently

The head teacher's instruction and the colleague's request are not morally equivalent and should not be answered as though they were.

• To the colleague: 'Take the items for the chapters you have finished, and I will give you a parallel paper for the rest. If our sections sit the same test, I cannot hand over the key beforehand.' That is a small, practical accommodation, not a favour refused.
• To the head teacher: decline the inflation and immediately supply the legitimate alternative, because a bare refusal leaves him with a problem and no solution.

The legitimate route

A reteach-and-reassess cycle meets the school's real need without a false number:

1. Use the low unit test as the baseline, item-analysed by learning outcome rather than by average.
2. Reteach the two or three weakest outcomes in a defined week.
3. Re-assess with a parallel paper on the same outcomes.
4. Report both rounds: baseline, reteach, gain. That gain is a genuinely better story for the CRP than an inflated average, and it survives a follow-up visit.

What he should say, in one line

'I will do the reteach and the re-test this week. The average will move on its own and we can show the recovery - and if you want, I will do the outcome analysis for the whole school.'

The limit

He should also keep the Class 5 results out of public ranking at the parent meeting. Under the RTE Act's continuous and comprehensive evaluation framework there is no place for public display of marks, and the honest version - outcome-wise progress, shared privately - is also the version that protects the children whose numbers are lowest.