Financial penalties should be levied on exam boards that issued papers with errors this summer, and pupils should be given full marks on questions with mistakes in, a group of influential MPs have told the education secretary.

In a letter to James Cleverly and Ofqual chair Ian Bauckham today, Robert Halfon, chair of the cross-party Commons Education Select Committee, said that multiple exam papers sat by students this summer “ignored” advance information, or contained “errors” due to exam board “negligence”. 

The errors would have resulted in pupils facing “unnecessary distress and anxiety” during this “already stressful period of high-stakes summer exams”, Mr Halfon said in his letter.

• GCSEs 2022: How exams differed this year
• Background: Lowest grade levels since 2019
• GCSEs 2023: How exams will be run next year

The Department for Education and Ofqual decided that advance information on summer exam content would be provided to pupils to help them “focus” their revision, to mitigate disruption faced due to the Covid pandemic.

The letter to Mr Cleverly states: “It is therefore deeply regrettable that due to an apparent lack of due care and attention, some exam boards have issued papers that ignored the advance information, or contained errors.”

It goes on to flag four separate issues as examples:

• AQA including a question on energy transfers and circuits in a GCSE physics paper. Circuits had not been included as a topic for revision in the advance information.
• An AQA A-level law paper including a 30-mark question on a topic not listed in advance information.
• Edexcel labelling Gabon as the Republic of Congo on a map of Africa in its GCSE geography paper.
• AQA’s GCSE geography paper featured a question that included a coloured map and key that were inaccessible to colour-blind pupils.

The letter adds: “Exam boards must automatically issue full marks for questions where errors occurred, and ensure this decision is communicated to schools and pupils without delay. We note that in the case of the AQA GCSE physics paper, AQA has already agreed to issue all pupils with the full 9 marks.

“Ofqual must levy financial penalties on exam boards whose papers contained errors. Fines should be proportionate to the scale of the errors, and significant enough to act as a strong deterrent.”

The letter in full reads: 

At the time of the error in its GCSE geography paper, Edexcel apologised for the “unintentional error”.

An Ofqual spokesperson said: ”We have received the Education Committee’s letter and note the contents.  The committee has already published Ofqual’s letter to them. This letter covers a number of issues including reflections on the summer 2022 exam series. It makes clear that our first priority is to regulate on behalf of students, so we expect awarding organisations to make sure that students’ interests are protected as much as possible and the integrity of qualifications is upheld.

“Ofqual will closely monitor the awarding process to make sure that students are not disadvantaged compared to those taking the same qualification with another exam board. Regulatory action is in scope whenever there are potential breaches of our rules, and is something we will consider once the immediate interests of students are taken into account.”

The Department for Education and AQA have been contacted for comment.