Pages missing in exam blunder

More than 1,000 students taking a test today are at the centre of another blunder by the exam board which printed a mistake on an AS-level maths paper.

Mid-Kent College of Further Education in Maidstone was sent an IT exam paper with two pages missing. Officials from the Edexcel exam board phoned staff at the college yesterday afternoon to alert them.

Instead of sorting out the problem as soon as it was discovered, the board said it would fax through the missing two pages at 9am today.

That left college staff half an hour to photocopy the two pages and then find the relevant place to insert them in each paper for 400 students at the first sitting of the exam which began at 9.30. A further 600 students are taking part in a second sitting of the exam later today.

Edexcel distributed a maths paper to AS-level pupils on Friday with a diagram for one question printed incorrectly which made it impossible to answer. It is also claimed that Edexcel lost the course work of performing arts students in Devon.

Theresa Murray, manager of the IT department at Mid-Kent College, said: "We are always having problems with Edexcel but this one is an absolute nightmare. It appears there are so many exam boards competing with each other for business that these mistakes are occurring more frequently.

"The exam boards are trying to do things on the cheap and are only looking at their own profits.

"But these errors cause so much administration work for us and are an added pressure for the students who need to be concentrating on taking the exam. There needs to be one exam board for each subject so we all know what is going on."