TAVISTOCK College last year had the worst truancy rate in the county, according to figures just released by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The school this week admitted unauthorised absences had been a problem — but that measures taken to tackle the issue have proved successful. College principal Colin Eves said: 'I am pleased to say that the work we have done now means that our unauthorised absence rate is extremely low and more changes that have been implemented this year have had the desired effect. 'Things don't get solved overnight but the hard work done over the last year is now reaping benefits.' The school's key stage 2 to GCSE contextual value added score is also one of the lowest in the county. Mr Eves said this could be explained by issues relating to last year's Year 11 at the school. He said: 'As a year group their attendance rate was only 84% — the majority of students had very good attendance rates but the bad ones were very bad and that will have had an impact on the results. 'There was a larger proportion of students who worked poorly than is normally the case. Mr Eves said last year, in order to help some students do as well as they possibly could, they were entered for fewer exams, enabling them to get as many grade C results as possible in the exams they did take. 'Doing that has effects on the statistics, but helps the individual students do as well as possible,' he said. ' I am pleased to say that all the students in key stage 4 can now take advantage of the change in curriculum that was implemented in 2006 and 58% of the current Year 11 is on target to achieve at least five grade A to C results at GCSE, which is a huge leap on this year's figure of 43%.' Mr Eves said the annually produced league tables could be useful, but did not show the proportion of students who had achieved particularly good grades, far in excess of their target levels. 'There were some outstanding achievements but the league tables only show averages,' he said.
