The school textbook that is so bad it comes with FOUR PAGES of corrections: GCSE religion guide mistakes praying Muslim for a Jew

Exam board-approved textbook gets key facts about religion wrong

It shows a picture of a Muslim praying - and claims it is actually a Jew



Teachers forced to tell pupils: 'Ignore this book'



AQA was accused of 'justifying' anti-semitism in May of this year, when one of its GCSE exam papers asked why people are prejudiced against Jews

It has also made previous blunders with exam questions and marking



Parents and pupils are furious after a religious studies GCSE textbook was discovered to be littered with errors - including a caption that identifies a picture of a Muslim as a Jew.



Staff at JFS (formerly known as Jews' Free School) in Kenton, North West London, have had to issue a four-page list of corrections to the 300 pupils using the book to prepare for their exam.



The AQA GCSE Religious Studies A: Judaism, produced for the exam board by educational publishers Nelson Thornes, has been branded 'offensive' and 'laughably bad'.

Hard to study: The textbook, left, has been slammed for being 'confused' and misleading' for pupils. Right, a picture from the textbook of a kneeling Muslim labelled as a Jew



It not only includes a picture of a Muslim kneeling in prayer described as a Jew - who do not kneel to pray - but also shows a picture of a family 'celebrating Shabbat', when in fact they are having a Passover Seder meal.

Shabbat, or Sabbath, is a weekly day of rest and spiritual enrichment and the most important ritual observance in Judaism, while the Passover Seder is a Jewish ritual feast that marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday, conducted on one or two evenings in March or April, on the 14th and 15th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar.

The blunders are especially embarrassing for AQA after it was accused of 'justifying' anti-semitism in schools in May of this year, when one of its exam papers asked GCSE pupils to explain 'why some people are prejudiced against Jews'.

One pupil said: 'It was so bad, the teacher kept telling us, "don't listen to this, ignore this, half of this is wrong".'



The mother of a JFS pupil told the Jewish Chronicle: 'The textbook contains countless errors and general, confused assertions about Judaism. The factual errors are laughably bad.



Clanger: The textbook says that this family is celebrating Shabbat, when in fact they are having their Passover seder meal

'A section headed "Reform Judaism" in fact talks about the practice of Orthodox Jews. A picture of a person kneeling in prayer, described as a Jew, is in fact a Muslim.



'Other assertions in the text, including commentaries on women who wear wigs, and why Jews think they do what they do, are misleading and offensive'.

AQA's CATALOGUE OF ERRORS

AQA has become infamous for errors in its exam questions and marking. It is a concern for pupils battling to get the best grades possible in GCSE and A-level exams:

(2010) 13 A-level students missed out on university places after marking errors by the exam board's online grading system.

(2011)

Students sitting an AS-level geography exam were given the wrong information in a question worth four marks, which asked them to label parts of a river.

Sixth-formers taking an AS-level computing paper were faced with an arrow in a diagram that was shorter than it should have been.

Pupils taking an AS-level business paper were faced with a question, worth up to three marks, that did not include the information needed to answer it.



Two thirds of a maths GCSE exam was identical to one sat by the same pupils three months earlier. (2012) AQA exam paper asks GCSE pupils to explain 'why some people are prejudiced against Jews'.

Pupils taking English language GCSE complain that pupils taking exam in January found it easier to get a C grade than pupils taking it in the summer.

She claimed that JFS had to contact AQA to confirm that if students used the correct information about Judaism it would not be marked incorrect by examiners because it did not tally with the information in the textbook.



Religious studies GCSE is a compulsory exam at many schools and a new textbook is now in production .

A spokesperson for AQA said: 'AQA doesn't publish textbooks. We do liaise with publishers to try to ensure references to our syllabus are accurate; however the publisher is responsible for the content of the book and, therefore, any errors.



'JFS brought the errors to our attention and we raised them with the publisher. This book is being reprinted by the publisher and we have asked them to address these concerns.



'The reprinted book will no longer carry the confirmation that it covers our syllabus, because of the serious level of concern we have flagged to the publishers about their errors.'



The school's headteacher, Jonathan Miller, said he had worked closely with AQA over the past year and was pleased there would be a new draft of the textbook.

Steven Mintz, the head of Jewish studies at Manchester's King David High School, confirmed that he had co-written the textbook, but declined to comment further.

This is not the first time AQA has come under fire for its association with mistakes that could affect pupils' exam grades.



In the summer of 2010, 13 A-level students missed out on university places after marking errors by the exam board left them with lower grades than they should have received.



The errors occurred when a failure with AQA's online system meant that not all of students' material was marked, an inquiry found.

The awarding body was criticised for not piloting its system properly, and for a delay in reporting the problem to exam regulators - meaning students were got given the university places they deserved.



In June 2011, thousands of pupils sat an AQA GCSE Maths test in which two-thirds of the questions were identical to ones they had answered in a paper just three months earlier.