Exam board sorry for results blunder

ONE of Britain’s biggest exam board, which has supplied and marked exam papers to schools in Oldham, mistakenly revealed A-level exam marks days before Thursday’s official results day.

The blunder by Edexcel saw results left online for around three hours on Saturday, potentially allowing thousands of students to find out early if they had hit the grades needed for university.

An investigation has now been launched and the company said evidence suggested that no more than 50 students accessed their results.

However, there were fears that some students who know their results could have been given a head start in the university clearing process if they failed to make their required grades.

Edexcel has previously supplied and marked papers for Oldham schools, including Buckstones Primary School, Oldham Sixth Form College and Hathershaw College of Technology and Sport.

An Edexcel spokeswoman said the company would not identify the names of the schools affected by Saturday’s blunder.

She said the company apologised to schools and students but believed no student would be unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged.

She said: “During our normal preparations ahead of results days we test all of our computer servers, and while doing so on Saturday we understand that part of our system was live to students who have registered in this way, if they tried to log in.

“We believe that our system was accessible for a few hours, and that a small number of students were able to access their results.

“We are investigating further to confirm this and are in the process of contacting schools with affected students, to whom we will offer support.”

However, one student from Brighton College, a fee-paying school in East Sussex, discovered he had narrowly missed his offer of a place at Cambridge University.

Richard Caims, head at the college, criticised the “chaotic” mistake.