Update on Exam Errors - 13th July 2011
Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:45
On July 1st the three regulators of qualifications and examinations in England, Northern Ireland and Wales announced a joint inquiry into errors affecting this summer’s GCSE and A level papers. The inquiry is being carried out by Ofqual in partnership with fellow regulators in Northern Ireland and Wales (CCEA and DfES respectively).
Since then we have held meetings with awarding organisations, the National Union of Students (NUS), Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), Universities UK (UUK) and Supporting Professionalism in Admissions (SPA).
The meetings have given the student representatives and the university admissions community the opportunity to express their concerns and needs as they prepare for results days in August.
The last examinations of the summer series have now been taken and the marking process is underway. We have been encouraged by the work of the awarding organisations in recent days in contacting schools and colleges, developing options for remedial action and developing communications plans, some of which have been put into effect. These actions are intended to minimise disruption to students and level the playing field to ensure, so far as possible, that no student is unfairly disadvantaged, or advantaged. The awarding organisations are committed to providing more information over the coming days and weeks via their websites and direct to exam centres. They are also contacting UCAS to tell them about the redress measures for each of the errors in good time, so that university admissions tutors can be better prepared .
A full list of papers affected is available along with links to the websites each awarding organisation.
A joint statement by the awarding organisations can be found on the Joint Council for Qualifications website.
