A secondary school has made pupils race to lessons to compete for seats in oversubscribed science classes, Tes can reveal.

At Bellahouston Academy in Glasgow the first 40 pupils to arrive at the school’s two dedicated Higher human biology classes this year were admitted but the final two were refused entry and told to join pupils studying for the less demanding National 5 qualification. Higher is roughly equivalent to A level and N5 roughly equivalent to GCSE.

The school said it introduced the scheme so as not to disappoint any of the 42 pupils who wanted to study Higher human biology this year. Since August two pupils have had to be accommodated in the N5 class on two occasions, headteacher Ian Anderson said. 

A parent told Tes: “My daughter tells me the teacher counts them in. At first I thought she was making it up but I asked her teacher at parents night who confirmed it.”

The parent, who did not wish to be named, said she had considered complaining but did not want to be responsible for having “two kids kicked off Higher biology”.

One teaching union has blamed a lack of funding for the situation.

Headteacher Mr Anderson said the school had employed an additional biology teacher two years ago and the situation had come about because of the way the school had decided to deploy its staff, not because of a teacher shortage.

Mr Anderson said: “So as not to disappoint any pupils the biology department came up with a solution to allow all 42 pupils opting to sit Higher biology and increased the staffing level to meet the demand. 

“The maximum for a practical subject is 20 so we have two Higher classes and on the two occasions since the beginning of term when all pupils turned up for the class, two of the pupils were taught the Higher course by another biology teacher in National 5 class.”

He added: “The numbers at Higher are now 39, meaning that there is no longer even this issue.”

‘A very strange way to organise classes’

Tes understands that the arrangement ended earlier this month when some pupils decided to drop out of Higher after the mock exams.

However, the parent argued that it would have been better for pupils and teachers if the school had introduced three Higher classes of 14 pupils from the outset.

The parent added: “If they are not permanently allocated to a class, how can the teacher ‘teaching Higher in the National 5 class’ possibly be on top of their individual needs and what they need to do on that day? Do they even know their names?”

Seamus Searson, general secretary of teaching union the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, described the arrangement as “very strange” and said the school had done a disservice to pupils and teachers.

Mr Searson said: “Pupils like consistency and to have their regular teacher. This is a very strange way to organise classes. A school can’t be banking on two pupils not turning up every lesson to make its classes work, and a teacher in another class should not be having two pupils dumped on them at the last minute - that’s not in anybody’s interest.

“This is to do with budgets and timetabling. There should have been three Higher classes and the pupils spread among them. We’re at the stage now where if a class does not have the maximum number of pupils, it is in danger of not being run, and that’s a sorry state to be in.”

Joanna Murphy, chair of the National Parent Forum of Scotland, said that the experience of being counted into class would have been “unsettling” for pupils and that the school should have communicated the arrangement more effectively to parents.

However, she added that if the school had turned down two pupils who wanted to study Higher biology it would also have come in for criticism.

Ms Murphy said: “This is January and that arrangement has been in place since August, so there has been plenty of time to tell parents about it. Parents in secondary are not standing at the school gate and don’t really have the opportunity to speak to teachers. That means they are often hearing about things from their young people, which is not always the most reliable way. The school could have avoided that by communicating with parents from the outset.” 

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