Thousands of pupils given wrong grades

London: Thousands of GCSE and A-level students were given the wrong grades last summer, new figures show.

A total of 17,491 grades had to be changed after complaints from schools and pupils, said the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority national exams watchdog.

The bulk of the protests concerned GCSEs. Headteachers claim the Government's refusal to cut the number of formal exams secondary school pupils have to take is fuelling the volume of complaints.

More exams

Pupils in England take more exams between the ages of 11 and 18 than in any other European country. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "There are far too many external exams. I think we would have more confidence in grades if they were based on students' work over two years."

There were 5,668 protests against A-level grades. Candidates can now re-sit any of the six individual modules that make up an A-level in the hope of getting better grades.

Complaints about GCSEs that forced examiners to revise their original grades totalled 11,720.

A further 103 cases involved schools and candidates going through a lengthy appeals process to get results adjusted after their initial complaints were rejected.

A QCA spokesman was unable to say how many grades were revised upwards on appeal but said that in previous years, only a tiny proportion of candidates saw their results fall after a claim of unfair marking.

Marking scheme

Most of the successful appeals involved claims that examiners failed to apply the marking scheme correctly.

Almost six million GCSEs and nearly seven million A-level modules were taken last summer. Headteachers believe the sheer volume puts intolerable pressure on the 50,000 examiners who have only a few weeks for marking.

The heads want specially trained teachers, known as "chartered assessors", to be given responsibility for assessing pupil performance over the two years of their courses.

They would check teachers' marks for accuracy and rigour and these would be combined with grades from a reduced number of timed public exams to give overall marks.

The QCA played down the figures, collected from the five main exam boards in England and Wales. "The proportion of A-level grades changed after enquiries is very small, less than 0.1 per cent in 2005, and has declined since 2004," a spokesman said.