Exam board’s £175k fine for Romeo and Juliet error

AN exam board will be fined £1 5,000 after a GCSE error left thousands of pupils facing an unanswerable question on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

A question in last year’s OCR English literature GCSE paper confused the two warring families, the Capulets and the Montagues, in the famous tragedy about two star-crossed lovers. At the time, the exam board, one of the largest in the country, apologised for the mistake and insisted pupils would not be disadvantaged.

But England’s exams regulator Ofqual yesterday announced it intends to impose a £1 5,000 penalty on OCR, saying the error meant the content of the exam paper was ‘not fit for purpose’.

The question read: ‘How does Shakespeare present the ways in which Tybalt’s hatred of the Capulets influences the outcome of the play?’

But Tybalt is Juliet’s cousin and a Capulet himself, so the question should have referred to his hatred of the Montagues. It was one of two Romeo and Juliet questions on the paper, with candidates required to pick one to answer.

A total of 14,261 youngsters sat the exam paper last May and of these 4,000 to 5,000 answered questions on the play – split half and half between the two questions, according to Ofqual’s investigation. OCR will not contest the fine.