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Gary Glitter expelled from GCSE paper

Inappropriate 'related listening'

Convicted paedophile Gary Glitter has been excised from a GCSE music coursework paper which listed his glamtastic 1970 hit I’m The Leader Of The Gang as “related listening” to be enjoyed by wide-eyed teens.

The outrage was spotted by an anonymous deputy headteacher and father of two from Windsor on the Assessment and Qualification Alliance (AQA) exam board's 1 November document circulated to thousands of teens "including his own daughter", the Sun explains.

He thundered: “He’s a convicted paedophile jailed for sexually abusing kids. It’s completely inappropriate to recommend him as listening material. Boys and girls of 15 or 16 who select this song will go straight to the internet to find Glitter’s music. I dread to think what they may find searching online for him.”

The AQA told the enraged dad that it was too late to reissue a Glitterless paper, but quickly found itself at the receiving end of a righteous shoeing by a queue of critics. Dr Michele Elliot, director of children’s charity Kidscape, said: “AQA need to get Glitter off there. It sends totally the wrong message to paedophiles’ victims. Thousands of children take this exam. If they buy his song it could be a nice earner for him. One way to show we dislike his abuse of children is to cut off the money he lives on. It’s in the hands of AQA to do that.”

Anti-child abuse campaigners Shy Keenan and Sara Payne weighed in with: “This stonking great child molester should crawl back under the rock he came from, not be celebrated for his music. We’ll campaign to have any reference to him taken out.”

Conservative Shadow Minister for Children Tim Loughton chipped in: “I can’t believe AQA could not find a song from an alternative musician.”

AQA spokesman Simon Buck responded: “We have only just become aware that there are complaints and as a result are reviewing whether it is appropriate to have Gary Glitter in the coursework. Until the situation is reviewed we are unable to say what decision will be made.”

Well, having reviewed the situation AQA has, the Guardian says, purged 69-year-old Glitter from the related listening list. Glitter - real name Paul Gadd - copped a four-month sentence in the UK in 1999 for downloading child porn images and also did almost three years in a Vietnamese prison for molesting two young girls. He's currently "in hiding" in Britain while subsisting on royalties of around £200,000 a year from his 1970s back catalogue. ®

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