Struck off, the teacher who faked pupils’ coursework

A BIOLOGY teacher has been struck off after using Tipp-Ex to recycle year-old coursework.

David McCallum, who taught at Douglas Ewart High School in Newton Stewart, Wigtownshire, took work from another teacher’s class and inserted the names of his own students.

A hearing of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) was told the discrepancy was uncovered after worried youngsters told another teacher they still had work to complete to be able to sit their exam.

Biology teacher Kirsty Armstrong said: ‘It was a bad state of affairs. There were only a couple of weeks before the students went off on study leave. They were cramming.’

It emerged during the hearing that at a school disciplinary hearing McCallum claimed he had lost the coursework and did not want his students to lose out.

He admitted presenting work undertaken by a Higher biology class of 2011-2012 as the work of the 2012-2013 class by changing the names of the pupils on the documentation.

He also admitted persuading his pupils to sign off the earlier work, which he had changed without their knowledge or any explanation of the documentation they were signing.

McCallum was not at the GTCS hearing but in a statement from his lawyer he insisted he did not make false statements.