Ofqual will be closely monitoring this years’ exams to ensure pupils are not disadvantaged by errors relating to the advance information they were given by exam boards, education secretary James Cleverly has said.
Responding to MPs’ concerns that multiple exam papers sat by students this summer had ignored advance information pupils had been given or contained “errors” owing to exam board “negligence”, Mr Cleverly said the mistakes were unacceptable.
In a letter to the Commons Education Select Committee, Mr Cleverly admitted there had been a small number of substantive errors, including some that related to advance information.
He told MPs that any errors were unacceptable and risked causing unnecessary stress for students.
Mr Cleverly said that Ofqual was now working to ensure that students who sat papers containing errors were not disadvantaged.
The Department for Education (DfE) and Ofqual had decided that advance information on summer exam content would be provided to pupils in some subjects to help them “focus” their revision, to mitigate disruption faced due to the Covid pandemic.
However, the education committee had written to the education secretary to raise concerns about a series of errors that students had reported.
In his letter replying to committee chairman Robert Halfon, Mr Cleverly said: “Young people had the opportunity to take exams this summer for the first time in three years. The adaptations to examinations and other formal assessments DfE and Ofqual put in place recognised the significant disruptions students had faced and enabled exams to go ahead.
“These adaptations were new for all of those involved in public examinations and, while there are only a small number of substantive errors, including those related to advanced information, any errors are unacceptable and risk causing unnecessary stress for students who have worked so hard to prepare for their exams.”
He added that Ofqual found that some of the concerns raised about the advance information provided to students resulted from a “misunderstanding of its purpose”.
However, Mr Cleverly added: “Where genuine errors did occur, Ofqual are overseeing the work of the awarding organisations to make sure students’ interests are protected and the integrity of the qualification is upheld.
“This includes closely monitoring the awarding process to make sure that students are not disadvantaged compared to those taking the same qualification with another exam board.
“In these instances, awarding organisations are communicating directly to schools and colleges or through public statements on their websites to explain their plans to mitigate any impact of these errors on students.”
Mr Halfon had written to both Mr Cleverly and Ofqual chair Ian Bauckham to say that 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.
