Eton deputy headmaster resigns after being accused of sharing exam questions

The deputy headmaster of Eton College has left the school after allegations he shared questions from an upcoming exam.

Mo Tanweer, deputy headmaster of academics at the prestigious school, left after an investigation by Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) into how questions for the Cambridge Pre-U exams, which many private schools use as an alternative to A-levels, had been shared among teachers.

The exam marks of Eton students who sat the economics exam have been declared void. Their grades will be calculated based on their performance in the other two papers they sat as part of the course.

Eton said in a statement: “Eton College can confirm that following an investigation by the Cambridge International Examinations board into maladministration, the board concluded that there had been a breach of exam security by one of Eton’s teachers in relation to one of the Pre-U economics papers.

“Eton took this matter extremely seriously and co-operated fully with CIE’s investigation throughout. The teacher concerned has left the school.

“Whilst pupils had done nothing wrong, they were inadvertent recipients of confidential information and so the board awarded them assessed marks for that paper according to its established method. Eton College deeply regrets that this incident occurred.”

Mr Tanweer, a former investment banker, was CIE’s chief examiner for the Pre-U economics exam, meaning he would have had access to the paper in advance of it being taken by pupils.

CIE alleges that he shared some of the questions with other teachers in Eton’s economics department.

In a statement, the exam board said: “Following an investigation into maladministration, students at one school have been given an assessed mark for one paper, which is based on the marks they each achieved in the other papers.

“This decision was made to ensure fairness to all students taking Pre-U economics in the June 2017 exam series. We sympathise with the students who have been affected through no fault of their own. All Pre-U economics entries from other schools were marked as normal. No other action was taken against this or any other school.”

Simon Henderson, headmaster of the £37,000-a-year school, has written to students who sat the exam to admit they were “inadvertent recipients of confidential information” and say he was “very sorry to be writing with this extremely unwelcome news”.

He said: “There is no suggestion that any boy at Eton has done anything wrong, nor is any member of staff at Eton other than Mr Tanweer implicated. However, CIE has decided that they cannot accept the marks of any candidate at Eton for this paper because to do so would threaten the integrity of the exam and certification.”

Mr Henderson said Eton would be writing to UK universities “from which our Economics candidates hold firm offers to explain the situation to them and to make it very clear that the candidates are not to blame in any way”.