An exam board has admitted setting an impossible question in GCSE business, hours before pupils were set to receive their results.

Candidates were asked to look at a table containing data and select two answers from five possible options. 

However, only one of the options was correct.

Pearson, which runs the Edexcel board, apologised for the blunder in the GCSE business unit 1 paper, which students sat on Wednesday 23 May. 

In an email sent to schools yesterday, Lee Seiler, delivery and awarding manager for business and economics at Pearson, said: “Shortly after the exam had been sat we discovered a potential issue with one of the questions in the paper - question 14.

“At Pearson we take such concerns very seriously and I subsequently discussed this with the principal examiner responsible for this paper and then conducted a full investigation into the issue myself.

“As a result of this, I can confirm that an error was identified with question 14.

“Question 14 asked for two conclusions to be drawn from a table containing data. There were five possible options given and candidates were asked to select two. However, there was only one possible right answer presented.”

Mr Seiler said this occurred because of a “typographical error in response D”. 

The response read “more than 6 customers think the least important reason is the design of the shop”, when it actually should have read “more than 6 customers think the most important reason is the design of the shop”. 

Mr Seiler’s email went on: “I would like to firstly apologise for the inclusion of an error in our examination paper.

“All of our examination papers and mark schemes go through a rigorous development process and all questions are reviewed and scrutinised to ensure that they are fit for purpose.”

In order to mitigate the error, he said the board had decided to award both available marks to every candidate who selected the one correct response provided. 

Once marking was complete, analysis was carried out to confirm that no candidate had been awarded 1 mark, and to identify how many candidates scored 0 on this question and whether this was in line with what would be expected of a similar question.

“This data was then used throughout the activities involved in setting grade boundaries to ensure that we were able to set boundaries which are fair and reflective of candidates’ performance,” he said.

Mr Seiler said that Pearson had taken the issue “extremely seriously”.