Pardeep Lahel

Introduction

Pardeep Lahel is the former head of IT and business studies at Perryfields Academy in Oldbury who was banned from teaching after admitting he deliberately changed exam-board-submitted grades for more than 150 students across three vocational courses — creating grades for students who had none and lifting U grades to passes. The Teaching Regulation Agency panel found all allegations proved on his signed admissions, and the decision maker, Marc Cavey, imposed an indefinite prohibition order on 4 December 2024. Cavey trimmed the panel’s proposed five-year review period to three years, ruling the order cannot be set aside before 8 December 2027 — a case showing the regulator weighing the integrity of awarded grades to universities and employers as heavily as classroom conduct.

Background Information

Lahel, born April 1979, joined Perryfields Academy on 1 January 2020 as head of department for IT and business studies, bringing roughly two decades in education with no prior disciplinary history or concerns about his leadership, teaching, or exam conduct. On 8 June 2023 he met with a school leader to discuss concerns about students’ coursework; the same day he was suspended pending investigation. A disciplinary hearing was held on 21 July 2023, which he did not attend, and his employment ceased that day. The school referred him to the TRA on 16 October 2023. The TRA agreed to his request that the allegations be considered at a private meeting without a hearing, on his signed statement of agreed facts admitting unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute; the panel convened on 29 November 2024.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Admitted and proved. Between May and June 2023 Lahel deliberately changed data submitted to exam boards: on the Pearson Business and Enterprise (BEN01) exam he created grades for around 11 students who had none recorded and increased the grades of around 69 students; on the OCR iMedia (R087/02) exam he created around 51 grades and increased around 22; and on the OCR iMedia (R082/02) course he likewise altered submitted data. He admitted every allegation, and the panel found them all proven.

His own accounts, given as results pressure mounted, trace the conduct. In the school’s investigation he said results were “really low”, there was pressure on Years 10 and 11 to achieve better grades, and that where a student was getting a U he awarded them a Level 2 Pass — about 36 marks’ worth. He said he had entered the unit marks on exam-board portals himself in 2023 only because the exams officer was busy; the marks entered did not match the department’s own records on OneDrive. He said he “had to make a decision, it was a poor decision and decision [he] regret[s]”. The panel compared the exam-board submissions against the departmental spreadsheet appendices and, while the data sets were not clean enough to fix exact numbers, found it more likely than not the grade creation and inflation occurred at the admitted scale. He said he changed only U grades — Year 11 iMedia and Year 10 business studies, the latter taught by a colleague who had “been happy to give some students U grades”, which he was not.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case received no press coverage; the published decision is the public record. The panel found every public-interest consideration engaged, singling out the impact on students whose marks came under scrutiny — delayed grades, and consequences for their transition to the next stage of education or work — and the public’s need for confidence in awarded results when judging candidates for courses and jobs. It listed the Advice’s aggravating behaviours as all present: abuse of position, dishonesty and lack of integrity, deliberate action in serious contravention of exam-conduct requirements, and knowingly manipulating a school’s data to enhance exam results. It accepted his twenty clean years and his mitigation — regret at not using whistleblowing channels about the pressure he was under, without blaming individuals — but found the actions deliberate and the adverse public interest decisive, recommending prohibition.

Current Status

Lahel is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. He may apply for the order to be set aside, but not before 8 December 2027, three years from the order — the decision maker having found the panel’s five-year recommendation more than proportionality required — and a fresh panel would then decide whether to lift it. The determination is dated 29 November 2024, with the decision maker’s order dated 4 December 2024, effective from service. His employment had already ended on 21 July 2023, the day of the disciplinary hearing he skipped. He retains a right of appeal to the High Court within 28 days of notice; the published record shows none was filed. No criminal proceedings appear in the decision.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Grade manipulation sits in an odd corner of the misconduct spectrum: no child is touched, no image stored, yet the regulator treated it as gravely as safeguarding failures — because fabricated grades corrupt the currency every university and employer relies on. Lahel’s case shows the two-edged nature of a clean record: twenty years without a blemish earned him a trimmed review period, not a no-order outcome, because the Advice treats deliberate exam-data manipulation as presumptively incompatible with teaching. His mitigation — that he inherited pressure and took a poor decision to shield students from U grades — was accepted as sincerely held and expressly not blame-shifting, and it is why his ban has a door, unlike the no-review orders imposed on teachers who lied about what they had done.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Pardeep Lahel” — source