14-year-olds set to wait months for test results

Tens of thousands of teenagers are still waiting to find out if their results from the troubled national English secondary school test are right, it emerged today.

The troubles engulfing the Key Stage 3 English test threaten to delay league tables for 14-year-olds, including those showing how much progress pupils have made.National results for the English test taken by 626,000 14-year-olds were supposed to be published on 24 August but now it is feared they may not be released until October or even later.

Some parts of the test are marked internally, others by outside examiners for the National Assessment Agency.

Secondary headteachers, who accused some examiners of "rogue marking" and are challenging the preliminary results, admitted schools were partly to blame as some did not send in marks awarded by teachers on time.

But headteachers insisted that problems with a new computer system that was supposed to speed up the marking and make it more accurate were also to blame for the delay.