Here's the statement from the school:
"Two Trees Sports College works extremely hard to ensure that its students have every opportunity to achieve and be successful. Our arrangements for Year 11 follow DCFS (Department of Children, Families and Schools) and Tameside LA (local authority) guidance, in that study leave should be avoided at all costs.
"The school is well organised over the coming weeks to support and help Year 11 students prepare for their GCSE exams.
"This is one of the reasons why Two Trees has rapidly improved over recent years, being recognised as one of the top 100 most-improved schools in England in 2007.
"We are very pleased that the vast majority of our students and parents are supporting us in our efforts to continue high standards at Two Trees."

Useful, eh?

STOP PRESS: JUST HAD A CALL FROM A PARENT. HER DAUGHTER HAS BEEN SUSPENDED TILL MONDAY WHEN SHE HAS AN EXAM. THE SCHOOL TEXTED HER MUM TO SAY SO.

SOMETIMES stories are just too good to ignore. And there’s a saying that some blackguard journalists sometimes utter to themselves under their breath: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

One such story found its way into the media a couple of weeks ago. I heard it on the wireless myself and fell for it.

Two twins who were separated at birth met through a fluke of fate, fell in love and married, only to find out to their mutual horror some time later that they were siblings.

Great story though it was, it turned out to be a load of old tosh. It came from Lord Alton, who when plain old David Alton, the Liberal MP, kept trying to get abortion limits cut back in the eighties.

He used it to advance his argument that all children should have the right to know the identity of their biological parents. When questioned further, he said he’d heard it from a judge who was “familiar with the case”.

But then perhaps not. Sir Mark Potter, the country’s top family judge, had never heard of it.

It was nothing more than an urban myth.

I’ve come to the conclusion that if a story sounds unbelievable, it probably is. It doesn’t mean it’s not a good story. But it’s pure fiction.

Father Christmas’s garb is not down to Coca-Cola’s clever advertising men, although a thousand pub bores will tell you it is.

The Forth Bridge is not being painted constantly.

Most dust in your house is not made of skin.

You probably are more than 12 feet from a rat.

The Great Wall of China is not visible from space.

You can swim after eating perfectly safely.

Nits don’t prefer clean hair. They just don’t care. It’s something made up to make kids feel better.

And Captain Pugwash’s cabin boy was called Tom, not Roger. And there never was a Seaman Staines.

Depressing, isn’t it?

All those things you’ve grown up believing turn out to be nonsense.

Then there’s the urban myth’s close cousin, the conspiracy theory.

A worrying number believe that the government organised the 7/7 bombings on the London Underground as a ploy for introducing ID cards.

A load of academics have been paid lots of cash to make up global warming to get us to pay more tax. (Strange how the carbon-unfriendly oil companies who are so powerful they’ve led governments to declare war haven’t “proved” climate change is nonsense.)

And then there’s Diana.

Mohammed Al Fayed, ably assisted by circulation-hungry newspapers, has managed to get the authorities undertake an apparently never-ending inquest into a woman who was killed 10 years ago.

Prince Philip, in league with MI6, wanted to do her in. Call me Mr Gullible if you like, but I think being in a car being driven too quickly by a drunk might have had something to do with it.

And we – that’s you and me, the tax-paying public – have to pay for it all. The Times reckons it’s going to be between £3.5m and £5m by the time it ends.

Now that’s unbelievable.

Although you might only see a couple of minutes on the programme, we film a lot more. We travel around to get material and interview people and then edit it before it’s broadcast.

However, there are occasions when I’m not busy.

I've spent seven days this week and last week in Chester at the city’s crown court, waiting for a jury to make up their mind about five teenagers accused of murdering what tabloid journalists (and nobody else) would call a have-a-go hero. My thumbs had rarely been so twiddled.

The jury came back at 2.47pm today. They found three guilty and two not guilty. And I won the work sweepstake on it. My colleagues reckoned I had inside information. I had no such thing.

When a jury goes off to reach its verdict, there’s not a lot to do. They’ve heard all the evidence (in this case more than five weeks’ worth). The court is adjourned and journalists, lawyers, the accused and everyone else just have to wait.

No jury is like any other. They’re completely unpredictable.

And no matter what, journalists have got to be there when the verdict is delivered, otherwise they’d miss the story. If we nipped off for a few minutes, sod’s law says that would be the time that the jury came up with the goods.

Anyway, I had to while away the hours as the jury deliberated drinking expensive, bad coffee in the court café with journalists from rival broadcasters, the press and agencies (oh, and some of the accuseds’ relatives – which could only lead to some rather awkward conversations).

There is only so much time you can spend talking to other journalists (they’re a weird bunch), doing the crossword or sending “I’m so bored” texts to your pals.

It’s hard not to feel guilty when you’re meant to be at work but not able to actually do anything, So I wrote and re-wrote my script and even filmed guilty and not guilty versions of the story – to assuage the sloth-induced guilt, to kill time and to prepare the story.

Eventually, PG Wodehouse came to my rescue. If I read Pelham Grenville’s work for the rest of my life, I’d still believe I’d spent my life wisely.

So I read and read.

Towards the end of last year, I spent three days waiting for a jury at Bradford Crown Court to make up their mind on Ronald Castree. I am a jury jinx.

Eventually, they decided that he had murdered Rochdale schoolgirl Lesley Molseed back in 1975. But by then I’d gone on holiday. So my colleague Ben Bland got the story and the glory after popping up to Bradford for a mere trice.

Anyway, it’s not just court reporters who spend a lot of their time in limbo, waiting before they can actually do some work. A lot of people spend their entire careers just waiting.

There have been a number of stories about firemen employed by smallish airports.

The airports need firefighters on permanent stand-by for obvious reasons. Most of them have probably done stacks of exercises and the like.

But some get their pension and a golden carriage clock without actually fighting a flame in anger.

And I suppose that particular phenomenon should really be filed up “Jolly Good Things”. Fires at airports are generally frowned upon.

There are others who just sit and wait for something before they can do some real work.

Paramedics work hard. But there must be occasions when nobody needs an ambulance and they’re waiting about, waiting for a 999 call.

In politics, Gordon Brown whiled away his time writing budgets and the like before Tony Blair decided to leave No 10 and spend more time with his wallet.

David Cameron must be constantly poised. He knows an election is not likely to be called soon. But he has to be ready, just in case.

And then, of course, there’s Prince Charles. Chatting to azaleas and criticising modern architecture can kill a lot of time. But, ultimately, he’s just waiting too.

So I got to talk to some unemployed people about how annoyed they are that job centres are shut, due to civil servants being on strike.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1213934526/bctid1334447178