Pearson - the owner of the Edexcel exam board - has written to headteachers expressing “profound regret” over the leaking of two A-level papers.

In a letter to heads, Sharon Hague, vice-president of Pearson and the officer responsible for Edexcel, says: “I am writing to express my profound regret that exams for two of this year’s A levels, economics and maths, have been overshadowed by concerns about whether or not content from the papers was made available before the exams were sat.”

Exams watchdog Ofqual confirmed to Tes today that it is not formally investigating either incident.

In her letter, Ms Hague admits that the situation had resulted in “anxiety for schools, teachers, students and their parents”.

She says Pearson is now able to disclose more information about the approach it has taken after receiving permission to mention a police investigation.

In the case of the maths exam, the letter states that “as a result of intelligence shared with us by students”, Pearson confirmed that exam papers were being illegally offered for sale on the morning of Friday 23 June. It was too late to replace exams to be sat that day, but Pearson notified Ofqual and the police, who began an investigation and have made arrests. 

Ms Hague says Pearson did not have reason to believe that there had been a widespread breach of the maths papers, and so did not postpone sitting of the exam on Monday 26 June. The police enquiries suggested that the problem was “localised”, so the company issued “replacement questions to be sat in the small number of schools and colleges where specific concerns had been raised”.

As a result, Pearson staff visited those centres on Monday morning to help teachers issue the replacement questions. 

The letter states that Pearson will undertake “additional statistical analysis” of this year’s maths A level to establish whether there are patterns in the results that are unusual for any centre or student.

‘We’ll ensure fair results’

“No student will be asked to retake a paper and every student should be confident that we will mark and award maths A level and ensure fair marking and fair results,” the letter states.

“It is regrettable that the fraudulent and criminal actions of a tiny number of people have added to the stress of this year’s exams for a much larger number of students, their parents and teachers,” it adds.

The case of the economics A-level exam taken on 19 June was different and not a criminal matter. Ms Hague says Pearson was “alerted to the fact that there had been a possible breach of content in one school, resulting in some high-level content being posted on social media for a very short time immediately before the start of the exam”.

“This activity contained no precise details about specific questions and we do not believe that any student has gained an advantage from this, although we will monitor trends very closely,” the letter states. 

“We have moved quickly to identify the individuals concerned and worked with their schools to identify what had happened. We quickly concluded our investigation and we will be following established disciplinary procedures against those individuals,” Ms Hague adds.

A spokesman for Pearson told Tes that none of its employees had been implicated in relation to either incident.

While Ofqual posted a statement on its website last week stating that it was “working with Pearson to establish the fact” behind the maths leak, a spokesman for the regulator said it was not formally investigating either incident. However, he added that Ofqual continued to be “in dialogue with all interested parties”.

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