Education signed off GCSE figures it now says are wrong

EDUCATION checked and signed off exam statistics in a skills report it now claims are wrong, it was revealed yesterday.

The Commerce and Employment Department confirmed that Education Department officials held several meetings with the authors of the Frontier Economics report and amended the details before it was published.

On Wednesday Education claimed statistics showing that GCSE results had declined over an eight-year period were not like-for-like comparisons, making them flawed.

Education minister Carol Steere (pictured) said Frontier Economics used the figures for exam entrants only, excluding those who had left school at 15 without getting any GCSEs, and that had skewed the statistics.

But Commerce and Employment chief officer Jon Buckland said the department had ample opportunity to check the figures.

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