Top town teacher Jon Whitcombe has accused Education Secretary Michael Gove of playing politics over changes to school league tables.

The Swale Academies' Trust principal says moves to give youngsters just one chance at getting a good GCSE result are more about the Tory cabinet member’s future aspirations.

He has vowed to stick with plans which let Sittingbourne Community College and Westlands Year 11 pupils have two chances at getting the best grades.

Up until September 29, pupils could sit their GCSE exams in English, English literature, mathematics, science, history, geography and modern foreign languages in November.

They could then resit them in the summer if they needed to improve grades – with the best result being recorded in the school’s performance tables.

But Mr Gove recently announced that with immediate effect, only a pupil’s first entry will count in the tables.

Mr Gove described early entry as a “damaging trend”, adding: “It seems likely that candidates are being entered before they are ready.

"And [they're] ‘banking’ a C grade where their performance would suggest that if they had continued to study the subject and taken the GCSE at the end of Year 11 they could have achieved a top grade.”

But Mr Whitcombe disagrees. He has decided to allow pupils to continue with their November exam entries for English and maths despite the impact it could have on school performance tables.

In a letter sent home to parents on Monday night, he said: “Early entry is never used to ‘cap’ a student’s attainment at a certain grade.

"On the contrary it is used to maximise a student’s onwards progress towards an outstanding final grade. Nothing matters more to us than our students attaining the highest possible grades in August 2014.

“If this change to policy is asking us as a school to choose between our league table position or the life chances of our young people, we will always select the latter.”

Speaking to the News Extra, he said “It is the right decision. There are few things that have wound me up in education but this has not got the interests of young people at heart.

“It’s playing party politics with children’s education which is appalling and we will put the interest of children above the political future of Michael Gove.”