Ministers blamed for AS-exam chaos

Sixth-Formers are having another nightmare summer, despite the Government's efforts to correct the "shambles" of last year's AS-level exams.

Students are sitting up to five separate exams in a day, under a new timetable devised to avoid exam clashes which last year meant thousands had to sleep overnight in their schools.

Now head teachers are demanding another rethink. Ministers may have made six-form exams easier for schools to manage, they say, but they have piled even more pressure on their students.

Education Secretary Estelle Morris was forced to apologise to schools and their students last year for the hurried introduction of the new AS-level exam, a key part of reforms intended to broaden sixth-form study and ensure more pupils stay in education after 16.

One of her first acts in post was to accept the recommendations of an emergency review by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority designed to cut the number of examinations.

The introduction of the new AS-level - intended to be studied in four or five subjects in the first year of the sixth form - had produced an exams logjam and drastically cut the amount of time available for sport and extracurricular activities.

Students hit by exams clashes had to take them the following day, staying overnight in school under the supervision of teachers to avoid breaches of security.

The QCA's solution was to combine separate AS exams - up to three papers in each subject - into one shorter exam. As a result, there have been fewer occasions this year when subjects clashed. But the new timetable has produced a far more intense concentration of assessment, and done nothing to reduce the intensity of study in the first year of the sixth form.

One head spoke of a sixth-form pupil "running in tears" from the exams room because of the added pressure.

Mr Paul Strong, head of William Farr Church of England Comprehensive in Welton, Lincs, said: "This unfortunate young lady had cracked in the middle of her fifth separate examination within a six-hour period.

"Five separate examinations in five separate topics within a six-hour period with a 10-minute break between each session is a ridiculous and totally unacceptable situation. Rigour, pressure and testing are all very well but by any measure, the ordeal this outstanding pupil has had to endure is nothing less than callous."

Delegates at the National Association of Head Teachers' annual conference in Torquay are due to debate the issue later this week. Today, the union's incoming vice-president, Gareth Matthewson, head of Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, said he had heard of other schools where pupils were equally stressed.

"The reforms the Government introduced have spread out the exams so there have been fewer clashes. But we are still examining students at A-level standard only two terms after they have done their GCSEs. That does not give enough time to cram in all the teaching they require."

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