Exam chief quits

The man responsible for running school tests quit today following a damning report into the failures of English tests for 14-year-olds.

Jonathan Ford, managing director of the National Assessment Agency, announced his decision after the publication of the report, which says blunders by government officials and examiners have undermined confidence in the exams system.

More than half a million pupils waited more than three months to learn the results of key tests because of computer and marking problems.

And a report from the exams watchdog will create fresh doubts about the state of England's exam system, which is still recovering from the 2002 A-level grades crisis.

"The whole test operations process is not robust in any sense," says today's report, which focuses on a catalogue of errors in secondary school English tests taken by 624,000 14-year-olds.

Ken Boston, chief executive of exams watchdog the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, ordered the investigation after schools protested about incorrect marks and late results in July. It was written by a committee of QCA board members headed by former Jaguar managing director Mike Beasley and a senior Education Department official, Hilary Emery.

The report will add to ministers' gloom, as the results are expected to show they have missed another crucial education target.

Poor management and leadership by everyone responsible were the "primary root causes" of what happened to the 2004 tests, the report says.

It adds: "The 2003-2004 key stage 3 English test operations process was plagued with a myriad of issues and errors.

While each issue and error in itself would have been manageable, the combination of so many caused the failure."

Schools first realised something was wrong even before the tests in May. They were supposed to get the papers up to two weeks in advance, but some still had not received them on the first day of tests.

Many results arrived late, said the report. By 13 July, schools were supposed to know their scores but only 77 per cent had received them.

Schools which tried to see their results on a website found they were wrong, or incomplete. And in the rush to get results back some were not checked properly.

A huge number of marks had to be reviewed, which meant the national results could not be published in August alongside those for maths and science.

The whole process sparked "anger, frustration and disillusionment" among teachers, who felt the fiasco undermined their professionalism.

The knock-on effects will rumble on as national league tables of results achieved by 14-year-olds have had to be put back from next month to March. Dr Boston apologised and admitted the QCA had failed in its "primary responsibility" to look after pupils' interests.