TEST results at one of the country’s top junior schools have been annulled because investigators found evidence of cheating. Waltham Holy Cross Junior School in Essex was stripped of its results for 11-year-olds in English, mathematics and science, sending it to the bottom of performance tables published today.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), which monitors the national curriculum tests, said that it believed that pupils had not completed papers unaided.

Diane Stygal, the head teacher, said that the school had been condemned by a kangaroo court. Mrs Stygal said: “We vigorously deny that anything went on. Just two months before the tests, we had an Ofsted report that said our children were in line to achieve very challenging targets.”

Waltham Holy Cross was rated among the top 5 per cent nationally for test results last year. But the QCA took the unusual step of awarding the ninety-one pupils zero scores in all three subjects after its inquiry at the school in June.

“We concluded that the results did not reflect the independent and unaided work of pupils,” a QCA spokeswoman said. The authority’s concerns were thought to focus on the invigilation of the tests.

Mrs Stygal said that staff had no opportunity to defend themselves because they were never told what the allegation was or who made it. QCA officials had told the school that there was no mechanism for appealing against its decision.

“It has been extremely stressful and it is beginning to tell on all of us. But the parents of the children concerned were fabulous, and many of them have written wonderful letters of support,” she said.

Lorraine Kent, the chairman of the school’s governors, said that the QCA was “unable to find any direct evidence relating to the allegation”.

She added that the governors continued to have confidence in Mrs Stygal, who has been head for nearly five years. “The governors and head teacher of the school are dismayed at the way QCA have dismissed the teachers’ and children’s hard work in this way, and by someone seemingly wishing to do harm to the school,” she said.

Essex County Council said that the inquiry was triggered by a complaint against the school by a member of the public.

The incident emerged as results from more than 14,000 primaries in England showed that schools with some of the poorest pupils are among the most improved. Nationally, 78 per cent of pupils reached the expected standard in English this year, up three percentage points on 2003 and the first increase in four years. There was a rise of one percentage point in maths to 74 per cent, but the pass rate in science fell by one point to 86 per cent.

These results moved the Government closer to its targets of 80 per cent for English and 75 per cent in maths, which schools were expected to meet in 2002.

St Michael’s Church of England Primary School, Bamford, in Rochdale, Lancashire, and Pirton School in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, led a group of 190 primaries in which 100 per cent of pupils passed the tests at the expected standard, level four.

Sherington Primary School in Greenwich, South London, was named the most improved in the country since 2001.

Schools in Birmingham, and the London boroughs of Hackney, Lambeth, and Newham were among those that made most progress with their pupils.

“We have come a long way since 1997, when a third of our 11-year-olds were failing to reach the expected standards,” Stephen Twigg, the Schools Minister, said.

But David Hart, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that the tables were flawed and should be reformed.

“The vast majority of heads regard them as being of questionable value,” he said.

“League tables are increasingly pointless because they do not actually do a very good job of providing information to parents and the public about how schools are doing.”

• The country’s worst-performing school could be closed and its pupils transferred to another primary under a plan being considered by Sandwell Council in the West Midlands.

  Only 7 per cent of children reached the expected standard in English this year at Kent Close school in West Bromwich.

  The school was bottom of the national “value-added” league table, with pupils losing nearly half of the progress that they were expected to make between the ages of 7 and 11.

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