£6m offer to ease exams crisis

Britain's big three examination boards are to offer schools cash payments in return for allowing teachers to mark GCSE and A-level scripts during the school day.

The three boards – Edexcel, AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) and OCR (Oxford & Cambridge and RSA) – will send a joint letter this week to all schools and colleges, offering up to £6m to help pay for supply staff to cover for teachers who are marking.

The unprecedented joint action comes after a warning last week from Dr Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, that he cannot guarantee the smooth running of this summer's examinations.

The move is one of a series of initiatives planned by exam boards to offset a predicted shortage of markers for the summer's 24 million scripts.

Edexcel is also extending its use of trainee teachers to mark exams. It tested this approach last year with GCSE history – recruiting about 30 trainees to help with marking. This year it will be extending the plan to A-levels – and intends to recruit 100 trainees to mark A-level economics and English, and GCSE English, geography, history and religious studies.

The QCA is backing the idea after a report on the marking standards of last summer's trainees showed they had been "100 per cent accurate".