Students ‘thrown off’ and ‘upset’ after A-level exam blunder missed out Shakespeare questions

Apology ‘does little to address emotional upset and distress’, union says

Exam board apologies for error (iStock/Getty)

A-level students have been “thrown off” and “upset” after an exam paper was missing pages and questions expected on Shakespeare texts.

Unions said Othello - which some had studied - was completely absent from the Welsh A-level exam this week, while half of the questions expected on two other plays were also missing.

The exam board has apologised for what is called a “paper collation error” in its Shakespeare exam.

Students in Wales said this mistake caused them problems when taking the WJEC exam this week, with

Kira Humphreys, who took the test on Tuesday, told The Independent she opened the paper to find half a Shakespeare extract that she was meant to answer a question on missing.

Students continued with the exam while invigilators attempted to sort it out.

“The missing extract completely threw me off and I was more focused on whether or not I’d get the second half of the extract,” the 18-year-old said.

She said she got the missing extract around 20 minutes later, but she left the exam not feeling she had done her best.

Another student told The Independent: “I was lucky enough to receive a correct copy 30 minutes into the exam, but others were waiting for an hour as invigilators were rushing to print and hand them out.”

They added: “Our work was severely affected and without an opportunity to redo that section I don’t see how anyone could be given a fair result given that many were affected at different levels.”

Some students were not impacted by the missing pages at all, as they were doing different texts that were provided in full.

Eithne Hughes from the Association of School and College Leaders Cymru said there would “inevitably” be “teething problems” with summer exams this year, before the first held since the Covid pandemic hit.

But she said the union was “astounded at the lack of quality assurance and quality control” that led to students being handed papers missing “four critical pages” during the English Language and Literature A2 Unit 3 exam on Tuesday.

“Learners who have been diligently studying and revising Shakespeare and expecting questions on Othello will have been thrown into a state of panic by the total absence of the play from the paper, whilst those studying both Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest were missing half of the questions they were anticipating,” the union leader said.

She added: “We note that WJEC has apologised to the affected learners but this does little to address the emotional upset and distress caused by errors that simply should not have happened.”

Meanwhile, students have reportedly left another A-level exam in tears after content was included that students were not prepared for.

One tweeted it was “horrific and completely different to anything we had been prepped for”.

Ms Hughes said A-level maths pupils had reported “some of the questions on their paper were so difficult to interpret that they were virtually inaccessible”.

A spokesperson for the exam board in charge, WJEC, said the A-level English mistake was a “rare occurrence” and it was taking the matter “very seriously”.

“We would like to reassure students that we have robust procedures in place to ensure they are not disadvantaged and that they are treated fairly,” they said.

“All examination answers will be considered carefully during the marking and grading process to ensure all students are provided with a fair qualification result”

The exam board spokesperson added:“This is our immediate priority, and once results have been issued in August, we will look carefully at the reasons for the error that occurred and take action as appropriate.”

On the maths A-level, the spokesperson said: ‘We can confirm that all of the questions within the A level mathematics Unit 3 examination were from the subject content in the specification and did not rely on knowledge and understanding of any topics identified as removed from assessment in 2022.”