More than half of teachers say that their students’ exam preparations were negatively affected by the errors made by exam boards in the advance information supplied for the summer series of GCSE and A level exams, a Tes poll has revealed.

It follows mistakes made in some of the advance information issued by exam boards to pupils in February this summer, which included questions and materials not subsequently included in exams.

Nearly one in five (19 per cent) of teachers who responded to the survey said their pupils had been hugely affected, while over a third (36 per cent) said they had been somewhat affected.

Find out about GCSE results day 2023 

Only just under a third (32 per cent) said their students were not at all affected.

• Background: ‘Grave’ fears over exam plan ‘fairness’
• GCSEs 2022: Fine boards over exam paper errors, say MPs
• Sutton Trust: 2022 exams not ‘fair’, say nearly half of teachers

Meanwhile, more than a third (35 per cent) of respondents said that the advance information issued by exam boards in February had been useless.

Less than half (47 per cent) said it had been somewhat useful and just 12 per cent said it had been very useful.

The Tes survey received over 900 responses from teachers, heads of department and school leaders who have been involved in the teaching of GCSE and A-level exam students this year.

Last month, Robert Halfon, chair of the cross-party Commons Education Select Committee, wrote to new education secretary James Cleverly and Ofqual chair Ian Bauckham, urging them to fine exam boards over exam paper errors. 

Referencing exam papers that included topics not detailed in the advance information issued to pupils in February, Mr Halfon said that multiple exam papers had “ignored” advance information, or contained “errors” owing to exam board “negligence”. 

He said that these mistakes would have resulted in pupils facing “unnecessary distress and anxiety” during this “already stressful period of high-stakes summer exams”.

Advance information topics were released in February and were intended to help pupils focus their revision. 

However, some papers this summer included topics that pupils had not been made aware of and had therefore not revised, teachers have reported. 

One teacher told Tes that the process have been “very disappointing”, while another said the communication from the government and exam boards over the process had been “awful”, leading to a “totally unfair and badly managed” system which meant they had “zero confidence that students will get the grades they deserve”.

They added: “Advanced information probably made revision even more complicated…[In one subject alone there were] 11 pages of notes that were so complicated you had hundreds of teachers trying to help each other online and then publish hints for students.”

Teachers told Tes that as a result of the errors, the results “can’t be compared to last year or even 2019” and they will have a “negative impact” on students’ progress and morale.

Another teacher told Tes that the errors in the advance information were “unforgivable”.

Meanwhile, one respondent felt that the exam boards involved in the mistakes should be “investigated” and a “formal apology sent to students”.

“The additional stress caused to students is outrageous and should be compensated,” they added.

One of the errors Mr Halfon flagged in his letter was a mistake from the AQA exam board which saw a question on energy transfers and circuits included in a GCSE physics paper, despite the topic not being included as a topic for revision in the advance information.

In response, Mr Cleverly said last month that Ofqual would be closely monitoring this year’s exams to ensure pupils were not disadvantaged by errors.

Concern students won’t receive deserved grades

The Tes survey also revealed that almost nine in 10 teachers are concerned that their students will not receive the grades they deserve because of Covid disruption.

Over half (53 per cent) of teachers were hugely concerned over the grades their students would receive owing to disruption from the pandemic. 

Just 8 per cent of respondents said they were not concerned that their students’ grades would be affected, while 3 per cent said they did not know. 

Meanwhile, almost a third (30 per cent) of respondents said they had spent more than 10 extra days preparing pupils for exams this year compared with their previous cohorts before the pandemic. 

Almost one-fifth (18 per cent) of respondents said they had spent more than five days of extra time preparing and 11 per cent said they spent more than two days.

Last week, a research report published by the Sutton Trust revealed that nearly half of teachers did not think the 2022 exams had been “fair”.

Forty-six per cent of teachers surveyed disagreed that the mitigation measures “will fairly take into account pandemic-related disruption and learning loss”.

A spokesperson for the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) said: “We want to thank all school staff for their hard work in preparing students for the first summer exam series to take place since 2019.

“We recognise the wait for results can be a challenging time, but the entire sector has supported students very well throughout all of this, and we look forward to being able to share exam results once again for the first time since 2019.

“Exam boards are dedicated to delivering results to students next week in order to help them progress in their education and career.”