Students flouting deadlines or plagiarizing work without penalty. Teachers pressured to not give zeroes. Principals raising bad marks.

The complaints were fast and furious during a spirited Hamilton forum on how to maintain the integrity of high-school credits as the province pushes to improve test scores and ensure students stay in school until they turn 18.

"It's when I have a student who gets 54 in (advanced) English and the principal changes the mark to 70," one teacher told the forum, hosted by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation of Hamilton-Wentworth.

"When I go home at the end of the day, I feel like I told a lie or I didn't do something I was supposed to do or I was bullied into doing something I don't believe in."

Another said even if there is no official prohibition, teachers, especially young ones, are under great pressure to not give zeroes and allow students to redo work that is blatantly plagiarized.

"It's naive to think students aren't going to take advantage of this," he said. "They're teenagers."

OSSTF vice-president Jack Jones said his union is working with the province to address such issues, but marks get skewed by the obsession with standardized testing and ever-improving student results,

"That's part of what you risk when you do that," Mr. Jones told about 40 teachers and parents on hand for the forum, held at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre.

"What we've instructed our members is that as long as you can back up that grade and you've done the work and you've followed government policy and board policy, then you're not obligated to change the grade," he said.

"But ultimately it's the principal that grants the mark."

Annie Kidder, president of People for Education, a charitable group dedicated to supporting public education, said she believes part of the problem is parents who "are terrified of their children ever failing or ever struggling or ever anything."

But she said even if there is no official government or board policy, the inflating of grades needs public debate, especially if the pressure is coming from principals.

"Parents are a different kettle of fish," she said.

"It should be a problem to everybody because we do need to have some kind of real understanding, or even a real understanding as a kid, of how I'm doing in whatever course."

NDP education critic Rosario Marchese said he believes the pressure to change marks comes from the province.

The Toronto MPP said an indication of the problem's scope is that an OSSTF credit-integrity working group felt compelled to state that marks should be a true reflection of achievement.

"Imagine that they feel that they need to say that," he said to laughter.

"Principals in general wouldn't be doing this on their own. There's pressure for testing and testing results. There's pressure for better outcomes each and every year.

"It's inevitable then that principals would put pressure -- and, by the way, in some cases it is parents."

Despite being "horrified" by tales of altered marks, Ms. Kidder said she believes the Liberal government of Premier Dalton McGuinty genuinely wants to help students who are struggling.

As an example, she cited credit recovery programs, which allow students to repeat parts of a course they missed or failed, rather than take the entire course again -- especially helpful "when you're already struggling and hating school."

Letting students earn "dual credits" outside of school -- at a business or college -- also seems to have some merit, even if it raises legitimate job-protection issues, she said.

"This isn't the same as the last bad government," Ms. Kidder said, referring to teacher battles with the Conservatives.

"I also see as a parent a desire for kids to succeed in school," she said. "I hope that we can find more compromise with this and keep hammering away at the pieces that aren't working, but also not throw out the baby with the bath water."

Mr. Jones agreed credit integrity is "an extremely complex issue" that requires balance.

"You have this issue of standardization, standardizing curriculum, standardizing testing," he said. "And on the other hand you have students coming into the system who are impossible to standardize and you have to deal with the individual personalities."