GCSE cheat teacher faces jail

A teacher could go to prison after stealing five GCSE maths papers and showing them to pupils at her husband's tutorial college.

Magistrates at Wimbledon committed Farzana Akbar, 46, from New Malden, to crown court for sentencing after deciding that the maximum jail term they could give of six months was inadequate.

Mrs Akbar pleaded guilty today to stealing the papers from Archbishop Lanfranc School, Croydon, in "a moment of madness".

Her solicitor told the court there was no financial motive for what she had done, but that she had been acting under stress from the onset of the menopause.

Scotland Yard also questioned her husband in relation to the theft, but he was released without charge.

Mrs Akbar did not even tell her pupils at the college that the paper they were practising, an Edexcel maths GCSE paper, was the same one they would sit with thousands of other students the following day. She

was extremely " remorseful" over what she had done, her solicitor said. Her only motive was that the college's pupils should do well.

Mrs Akbar's solicitor read a number of tributes to the court from colleagues, praising her work as a teacher during 13 years at Archbishop Lanfranc School.

The theft came to light in June when police swooped on a private tutorial college, Headstart Education, in Merton, run by Jamal Akbar.

They found students practising questions from a paper, which was due to be sat by thousands of pupils across the country.

Suspicions had been aroused at the exam board when teachers reported that other pupils who had attended the tutorial college discovered that questions appeared remarkably familiar when they came to sit their exams.

Edexcel went straight to the police, who set up the raid which caught Mrs Akbar red-handed.

She could face a seven-year sentence. The theft has raised fresh fears about the security surrounding exam papers.

Last year Edexcel was embarrassed when a copy of an A-level paper was sold. Scotland Yard investigated the theft of the Alevel pure maths paper, which was found to be available in London on the black market for £400.

After the latest security breach, the board turned on the head teacher at Archbishop Lanfranc School, David Clark, accusing him of allowing Mrs Akbar access to papers.

Edexcel chief executive John Kerr said he was "appalled that a head teacher can so blatantly choose to ignore the established rules of examinations". However, Mr Clark hit back, claiming the board had cleared the school's security measures and describing its charge as an " extraordinary statement".

He said Mrs Akbar had been allowed "limited access" to papers in controlled conditions, but that she had abused the trust the school had placed in her.

Mrs Akbar had been responsible for a selection of exam papers for five years, as a trusted member of staff. She resigned from her post at the school on the day after the police raid.

Prosecuting, Martin Fox said: "Mrs Akbar wanted to make sure her pupils would pass the exams because she felt personally responsible for their results.

"The parents of candidates sitting exams are entitled to know that the exams are fair for all. Any universities accepting pupils are entitled to know that they have got there purely by merit."