Exam board apologises over impossible maths AS-level question

OCR said students will not be unfairly disadvantaged by mistake, amid fears it could affect their chances of getting into university One of England’s biggest exam boards has been forced to apologise after pupils were set an impossible question in an AS-level maths paper. OCR promised to take the error into account when marking the exam, amid students’ concerns that the mistake could affect their university places. The question, which was worth eight marks and 11% of the paper, was impossible to solve due to a miscalculation of an equation. Students were presented with a diagram showing a network of tracks in a forest. The distances between points on the network were also set out. Students were then asked to find the shortest route to walk along every track, starting and ending at the same point. The given length was supposed to be equal to an equation set out in the paper. But OCR admitted that it failed to calculate the length properly – meaning the shortest route failed to match the mathematical equation. A total of 6,790 sixth-formers sat the paper on Thursday 26 May. Since then, many have been posting messages on social networking sites calling for a resit, and expressing fears that the mix-up may harm their university chances. One student wrote on thestudentroom.co.uk : “Can we not all or the majority of us write to OCR and demand a resit?” Another said: “I agree, there is no fair way to mark it and loads of us need certain grades for uni.” Grades from AS-levels are used by students when applying for university places. One poster suggested that students could attempt to bring legal action if they missed their grade, and therefore university places as a result of the error. “On a teaching website, a head of maths has proposed that a no win, no fee solicitor could bring a class action to represent anyone who fails to make their university offers because of this and ends up paying £9,000 per annum university fees instead of £3,000 per annum,” wrote the poster. In a statement, an OCR spokesman said the exam board “very much regretted” the mistake. “We would like to assure teachers, parents and students that we have several measures in place to ensure that candidates are not unfairly disadvantaged as a result of this unfortunate error. “Because we have been alerted to this so early, we are able to take this error into account when marking the paper. “We will also take it into account when setting the grade boundaries. We have sent a letter to all schools and colleges explaining in more detail what we shall do. “We do apologise again that this has happened. To help us understand how this occurred and to minimise the chance of such an error happening again, we will be undertaking a thorough review of our quality assurance procedures.” AS-levels Students Higher education Mathematics Schools guardian.co.uk

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