EAST Lancashire headteachers are calling on top level education bosses to widen the new measure used to rank schools.

Heads across the area have been left angry when it was announced that GCSE league table results would be compiled using the new English Baccalaureate as well as five A* to Cs including English and maths.

English Baccalaureate, or English Bac, is a stricter criteria where GCSEs in English, maths, a science, a foreign language and a humanity such as either history or geography at grade C or above are pooled together.

The additional inclusion of foreign language and humanity subjects have resulted in some top schools which taught humanities combined, such as Tauheedul Islam Girls School, falling to the bottom of the tables.

The school has now introduced separate subjects for geography and history rather than combined hunanities to meet the new criteria but this won’t kick in to the rankings for at least a year.

Headteachers are particularly unhappy as the new measure was brought in retrospectively.

Martin Burgess, headteacher of Shuttleworth College, said: “It holds school to account for something they knew nothing about two years ago when students picked their GCSE options.

It is absolutely ludicrous.

“Parents in this part of the world see no purpose or utility to learn a modern foreign language. They have no enthusiasm for it.”

Tauheedul Islam Girls School headteacher Mufti Hamid Patel said: “I think the key thing first of all is that schools like Eton and Harrow are in the same position as schools like Tauheedul.

“This is a criteria that has been applied retrospectively. From our point of view 84 per cent of our pupils achieved four out of the five English Bac subjects. Let’s broaden the acceptable subjects for it.

“We see this as a positive move, but we are concerned about the implementation.

“We introduced geography last year and we have also introduced history.”

Haslingden headteacher Eve Challinger said: “I feel very aggrieved that the hard work and effort of these young people is now being marred by the Secretary of State moving the goalposts. It really does beggar belief.”

Headteacher of Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Blackburn, Simon Corns said: “We accept that some GCSEs barely challenge, but we don’t offer those at this school and still we appear to be unfairly penalised.”