A Greenacre Academy teacher has been banned from teaching for life after lying about his pupils’ GCSE marks in computing.

David Fitzgerald was accused of several counts of dishonesty in regards to assessments carried out by pupils of the Chatham school in 2016.

The allegations included providing improper assistance during a controlled assessment, submitting inaccurate marks to the exam board, falsifying work and hiding his wrong-doings.

A hearing was conducted by a panel from the National College for Teaching and Leadership on behalf of the Department for Education. Mr Fitzgerald did not attend despite being contacted several times.

A report into the matter includes interviews with three students whose grades raised alarm bells. One said: “Sir made sure I did it right, he gave me a sheet with the answers on.”

The same pupils were provided with transcripts of their work and asked if it was theirs.

One said: “This isn’t my work. I didn’t do this. I didn’t do any work on A453 (the controlled assessment) at all, it was too hard.”

And another said: “I got help from sir to word it properly. I got a lot of help from sir, he ran me through each bit of coding and worded it for me.”

The panel felt this proved he had falsified some of the work.

Another teacher gave evidence to say a step-by-step guide on how to complete the assessment for that year’s exam had been posted on the school intranet. This should have been generic examples to guide the students.

Mr Fitzgerald was found to have submitted higher grades than the pupils achieved.

It was agreed he could not have confused the grades when he put an A in rather than a U.

The panel published a report on its decision with the final decision made by official Alan Meyrick on behalf of education secretary Justine Greening.

The report reads: “At no point had Mr Fitzgerald admitted this was a mistake and, in fact, when questioned he made arguments for why those grades were correct and were possible.

“The panel felt this was particularly dishonest as if this was a mistake he could have owned up to his behaviour but instead he continued to deny any wrongdoing and stated the grades were received through him giving the pupils ‘a lot of support’.

“The panel concluded Mr Fitzgerald’s actions undermined the integrity of the exam system and ultimately the integrity of the teaching profession.”

Mr Fitzgerald will be prohibited from teaching indefinitely at any school, sixth-form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home. He is also not entitled to appeal the decision.

Shelly Bridger, Head of School at Greenacre Academy, said: "As a good school, we take our responsibilities very seriously.

"As soon as we identified a problem with Mr Fiztgerald, he was suspended from the school and upon further investigation was subsequently dismissed. As a school it was our duty to report him to the authorities as in the circumstances, his professional conduct as a teacher had been completely unacceptable.

"We are sorry that his actions have ended a very promising teaching career."