Friday, May 23, 2008

Exam papers had answers on back

Thousands of pupils sitting their GCSE music exam may have thought their dreams had come true when they discovered that the answers were printed on the back of the exam paper.

Now, however, the printers' error has become more of a nightmare, as the students have been told that they may have to resit the paper.

The mistake was noticed by school pupils in Hereford and Worcestershire, who found that a list of composers printed on the back of the exam directly related to the questions on the other side of the sheet.

Some of the pupils dutifully put up their hands and reported the error to the invigilator. Others carried on with test. The examiners fear that some students may not even have noticed the error, creating an unlevel playing field when assessing the results.

The Oxford, Cambridge and RSA exam board, which issued the paper, said that it would make sure that no-one was disadvantaged by the error, which seems only to have affected some schools.

In a statement OCR said: "OCR regrets that a printing error may have affected a small number of marks on the GCSE Music question paper.

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