Pupils are interrupted mid-exam over maths paper error

STUDENTS sitting a maths exam at Stoke Park School were interrupted and told there was a mistake in one of the questions on their test paper.

The school said it doesn’t think students suffered as a result of the blunder on the OCR foundation paper which the youngsters had to correct themselves.

Head teacher Sue Jones said the school’s exams officer was asked by the examination board OCR to ask students to correct the error and that this was done immediately.

But the exam board OCR says it notified the school in advance of the exam by both email and by post.

“Earlier this week, OCR sent out a notice by post and email notifying schools in advance of a small amendment to one of our GCSE Maths papers.

“This is a familiar practice for exam boards and for exams officers. Our records show that Stoke Park School received the notice (by post on Tuesday, June 6, and by email on Wednesday, June 7).

“If, unfortunately, the amendment had to be actioned during the exam itself, we understand this can be disruptive. This was a minor change however and we appreciate the school’s and students’ co-operation.

“We have not received any other enquiries about this exam and this was an isolated incident.”

Mrs Jones said the school’s exams officer spoke to students for about a minute outlining the error by the exam board and how it should be corrected and then supported any students who wanted further clarification.

She added this all took just a matter of minutes.

The head teacher said: “There was an error on the OCR paper Foundation Maths, new specification J560 paper 2. As soon as our examinations officer was made aware of this he informed the students and they made the relevant corrections to their paper.

“We do not think any of our students will have been adversely affected by this although we will inform the exam board that we had to interrupt the exam for a number of minutes.”

Only last month the same board admitted to an error in an English Literature GCSE exam, taken by about 14,000 teenagers.

The mistake related to a question on Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet in which the family background of a key character, Tybalt, was mixed up.

It suggested he was a Montague when in fact he is a Capulet.

The board apologised and said no candidates would lose out, but head teachers said the error was “serious”.