A priest has been banned for life from teaching after it emerged that he had been giving seven-year-olds extra reading tests that could have boosted his own reputation and that of the school.

Rev Paul Lock was the headteacher of Willow Tree Primary School in St Helens, Merseyside when he gave extra key stage one phonics tests in which children read out a list of words while a teacher listens to their pronunciation.

Lock, 51, admitted to carrying out extra tests in the corridor after classes after he was spotted by colleagues. The exams for up to 40 children formed part of their SATs (Standard Assessment Tests) which in turn measure the school's progress in boosting pupils' performance.

After the local council launched an investigation, Lock – a former director of the Blackburn Diocese Board of Education – was suspended and all 40 of the pupils' test results were declared void.

Before qualifying as a teacher, Lock served as a priest in Liverpool and London. He was appointed head of Willow Tree Primary School in 2014 after working for a number of schools in the Church of England Diocese of Blackburn.

According to a report of the investigation, which was held in private, Lock admitted he had behaved dishonestly and unprofessionally by testing the children on more than the one occasion permitted under the SATs regime.

The panel concluded: "Mr Lock's conduct was dishonest according to the ordinary standards of a reasonable and honest headteacher and that Mr Lock must have known that what he was doing was dishonest".

It added that his actions had fallen "significantly short of the standards expected of the profession" and constituted "fraud and serious dishonesty".

The Daily Mail pointed out that while artificially boosting pupils' results would not have led to any financial gain for Mr Lock or the school, it could have led to misleading comparisons with neighbouring schools based on SATs results as well as enhancing his reputation as a headteacher.

An official at the Department for Education, Jayne Millions, said: "This was a very serious case of maladministration. Mr Lock's conduct has had a serious impact on pupils and fundamentally affected the education of pupils by undermining the integrity of the testing regime."