Teenagers are marking Sats to clear backlog

Teenagers are marking crucial Sats exams, an MP claimed today.

Barry Sheerman, chairman of the education and skills committee, said he had evidence that "people who have just passed their A-levels" were hired to mark papers.

The claim came as Schools Secretary Ed Balls refused to apologise for a marking fiasco despite admitting 120,000 pupils will not get their Sats results by the end of term.

Mr Sheerman said he was told that ETS, the company running the marking system, had hired the teenage examiners and he had raised the issue with exams regulator Ofqual. He said: "They were astonished when I produced a piece of evidence which I know to be true.

"An agency hired a graduate to mark science, maths and English papers. He was the most experienced member of the team."

Mr Sheerman stressed that some of the markers were non-graduates.

Mr Balls, meanwhile, was savaged by MPs and confronted with the spectre of Estelle Morris, who quit as education secretary after the last marking disaster on this scale.

Mr Balls told the Commons' children, schools and families committee that only 80 per cent of results for Sats taken by 14-year-olds would be released by the end of the week. They are already over a week later than planned.

Even fewer results would be ready for the English tests, he said. This would leave at least 120,000 teenagers having to wait until September for their grades. MPs branded this a major "cock-up" and Tory Douglas Carswell told the minister that Baroness Morris had apologised when she resigned after the A-level grading fiasco in 2002.

Despite repeated invitations, Mr Balls did not apologise and would only say: "I have said it's unacceptable. I'm really upset - like you are - about what has happened and for the way in which ETS has let down schools and parents."

Asked again about an apology by Mr Carswell, Mr Balls said the head of the Government's testing quango had apologised "on the radio".

The Government has launched an inquiry into the problems that hit national tests taken by 1.2 million children in England this year.

Results for 11- and 14-year-olds were held back because of blunders by exam chiefs and many schools have had to rely on teachers' judgments because test results will arrive too late for end-of-term reports.

ETS has been warned it faces a penalty of "tens of millions" of pounds.