STATE schools may be excluding thousands of underperforming students in the months before their GCSEs to “game the system” it has been claimed.
An investigation by The Times found almost 13,000 teenagers’ results were not recorded on their schools league tables despite being on the school’s roll the previous year.

Ofsted said it was “concerned” by what the investigation found.

Matthew Coffey, Ofted’s chief operating officer said: “We are increasingly concerned about the scale of off-rolling apparent in some secondary schools.

“It is never acceptable to use exclusion to boost school performance.”

The school inspectorate has launched an investigation into the findings and has already identified 300 schools which high dropout rates.

They have already found as many as one in four GCSE students at some schools were removed from school rolls.

Schools are only meant to expell pupils as a last resort and removing students to boost results - known as’off-roilling’ - is illegal.