Gove expresses anger after further blunders exposed in exam papers

Students issued fresh calls for Mr Gove to launch an investigation into the mistakes, amid concerns about the impact on grades and university places.

It came as two of England’s biggest exam boards were forced to apologise again yesterday after errors were discovered in two GCSE papers and an A-level exam.

One board, OCR, said it “deeply regretted” the mistakes and said jobs may be lost as a result.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “The Secretary of State is angry about these and other errors. He has said repeatedly that the exam system is discredited and action must be taken.”

Shane Chowen, National Union of Students’ vice president said: “Despite calls to ensure they avoided further mistakes, exam boards are creating confusion and failing students. The responsible exam boards must be compelled to pay for students who have been disadvantaged by these errors to resit.” Students taking a GCSE maths exam yesterday morning were given a paper containing questions from an old exam. A printing error meant a paper, set by the AQA exam board, included questions originally answered by pupils in March. AQA said up to 2,500 students out of the more than 31,000 who sat the exam were given the incorrect paper.

It added it was “very sorry that this has caused some students distress this morning”. A spokesman for the OCR exam board apologised for two mistakes uncovered yesterday, saying it “deeply regrets” the errors – one in a GCSE Latin paper, and the other in an A-level physics exam.

The Latin GCSE paper, taken by up to 8,000 students, contained incorrect names of writers and characters. The errors affected three questions, two of which were worth two marks each, while the third was worth 10 marks. The physics A-level paper, sat by almost 8,000 students, contained a measurement given in both centimetres and metres, when it should have been in metres only.

The OCR spokesman said: “We deeply regret these errors. We are extremely angry, because this is not fair on students, parents and teachers. It is not acceptable, and if we find that someone has not done their job, they will lose their job.”

Earlier this month, regulator Ofqual chief executive Glenys Stacey wrote to exam boards warning there must be no more mistakes.