Pupils ‘will not lose out’ over exam paper errors

Exam boards seek to reassure students who sat papers containing errors that they will get the grades they deserve Students who sat exam papers that contained errors this summer will “get the grades they deserve,” exam boards have said. Qualifications regulators for England, Wales and Northern Ireland are investigating why mistakes appeared in 12 exam papers. Some 10 of the errors were in papers sat by pupils in England. The Joint Council for Qualifications, which represents exam boards, said it had taken action to ensure no pupil would be disadvantaged by the errors. In some cases, exam boards have awarded pupils full marks for rogue questions, while in others they have discounted the question and changed the total number of marks available for a paper. It said exam boards had used “well-tested statistical procedures … to ensure that all students receive the grades they deserve”. In a joint statement, the exam boards said they “deeply regret” that the errors occurred and “wish to apologise again to students and their families”. “Although only 12 out of more than 60,000 questions set this year were affected, we understand the distress they have caused,” they said. Exam boards said they had told university admissions tutors which papers have contained errors so that students’ chances of winning places on degree courses would not be jeopardised. The qualifications regulators said their investigation into why the errors happened would be finished before the end of the year. The errors included a printing mistake in a maths paper, set by the AQA exam board, which included questions originally answered by pupils taking the same exam in March. Over 31,000 pupils at 567 schools and colleges took the paper. Other errors were discovered in a GCSE Latin paper and a physics A-level exam, both set by the OCR exam board. GCSEs Schools A-levels AS-levels Students Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 5, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.