Blundering exam board 'must lose its licence'

Britain's biggest headteachers' union called for the exam board Edexcel to be stripped of its licence last night after it was forced to apologise for its second blunder in less than a week.

The examinations watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), has already launched an inquiry into the latest in a string of errors by the board, which gave thousands of students potentially misleading instructions for the new vocational business studies A-level.

Edexcel began an internal investigation yesterday, saying an oversight by staff meant papers sent to schools had asked students to answer "all nine questions", when there were actually 11 on the paper.

As the exam season started this week, pupils sitting an Edexcel AS-level government and politics examination had been confronted by potentially misleading election data. In addition, The Independent reported yesterday, Britain's largest exam board, AQA, had asked English literature GCSE students to answer questions on poems not on their syllabus.

In January, Edexcel was placed "on probation" by the Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris, after reports of serious mistakes in exam papers. Since Ms Morris's intervention, the QCA has been monitoring the board, pending a decision this year on whether it should keep its licence.

Last night Edexcel issued an "unreserved apology" but sought to play down the error, saying it had not caused such great difficulty because the students sitting the exam were bright enough to spot the howler. It added that an erratum notice had been sent by registered post to all schools.

Bob Reed, headteacher at the Anglo European School in Ingatestone, Essex, said no notice of the error had reached his students before their exam. "It is not good enough for the board to send a correction by post to a large secondary school and expect it to reach the right person in time. Luckily a member of our staff spotted the error but if they had not our students could easily have been seriously disadvantaged by this mistake. Edexcel have made a serious error. I think they are simply overwhelmed by the volume of work they have to do."

David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, called for the board to lose its licence to run public exams at the end of this exam season. He said: "We have now reached a level of incompetence that would not be tolerated in any normal organisation. I think the Government just wants to get through the exam season before taking action to strip Edexcel of its licence. If they do not act ministers will lose all credibility with the public, who will see them giving organisations like Edexcel one last chance over and over again."

Edexcel's spokeswoman added: "This was a minor error. But anything that could cause confusion for students during their examinations is of real concern. There were very clearly 11 questions. We have launched an investigation into how it happened because we employ proof readers who should have spotted this mistake.

"But our main concern is with the students and to ensure that if they were confused by this – although the early indications are that they were not – they will not be disadvantaged."

Last October, Edexcel's chief executive, Christina Townsend, resigned, citing a "particularly demanding year". The board had been hit by complaints about errors in several exam questions.

But the problems resurfaced in January, when 2,500 AS-level maths students were presented with an unanswerable question because of a printing error.