Well, it is not uncommon for me to make a mistake with the articles and worksheets published here, but I don’t have a team of proof readers to help me. Far more serious was the error in this years Maths AS Paper.
Over 6000 students took the paper and the question with the highest number of marks was impossible to answer! The question carried 8 marks out of 72 being awarded for the whole paper. This meant that many students would have agonised over the question, wasting many minutes in futilely trying to reach a correct answer.
A spokesperson for the exam board said,
“We very much regret that there was a mistake… and that our quality assurance procedures failed to identify this error.
“Because we have been alerted to this so early, we are able to take this error into account when marking the paper. We will also take it into account when setting the grade boundaries. We have sent a letter to all schools and colleges explaining in more detail what we shall do.
“We do apologise again that this has happened.”
Obviously some of the students think that this is a less than satisfactory outcome as some would have spent much longer than others on the question, leaving less time for the rest of the exam.