Did the exam board or the schools fail to make the grade?

The controversy over this year's A-level results has blown up, with claims that some pupils had their papers deliberately marked down

The university plans of hundreds of Britain's most expensively educated schoolchildren have been thrown into doubt by a dispute over allegations that their exam papers were deliberately, and unfairly, marked down.

A group of independent schools including Eton and Harrow is claiming an exam board conspiracy has deprived their students of top A-level grades simply to protect the exam from accusations of dumbing down. The group, which includes at least 30 members of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), the organisation that represents the top boys public schools, says the scripts were marked down to avoid a massive inflation in the number of A grades awarded. A big increase, it is argued, would in turn have led to right-wing critics of the Government claiming that standards had slipped.

And state schools are furious about the marking, too. Indeed, the only threat of legal action so far against the OCR exam board comes from Andrew Wheen, whose 18-year-old daughter, Laura, lost a place at Lancaster University when she was given a C grade in psychology after being predicted to gain an A grade. She is a pupil at Knight's Templar state secondary school in Baldock, Hertfordshire, where many parents are upset at grades given to their children.

But the board has hit back, angrily claiming that the schools had not prepared their pupils properly for the new-style exam and that any disappointing grades were fully deserved.

The main controversy is over the English, history and psychology papers set by the Oxford and Cambridge RSA board (OCR), the exam board favoured by the independent sector. Schools complain that pupils whose other school work led their teachers to believe they were worthy of an A grade pass had their course-work downgraded to a failing U – unclassified – grade.

The OCR admits the number of requests to remark A- level papers this year has risen from 1,618 to more than 4,000. But it says there are bound to be more concerns and appeals because the A-level is in the first year of a new system very different from the previous one. The sixth form is now split into two, with AS-levels taken in the first year and A2s taken at the end of the second year.

The AS-level, it argues, was devised as an exam that was not supposed to be as taxing as an A-level. So to balance the easier standard of the AS-level, work during the second year of the sixth form was always supposed to be more demanding and, yes, exam boards did raise the boundaries for grades on A2 work in virtually every subject. Schools, they argue, might not fully have realised this.

It sounds plausible and the conspiracy theorists' argument – that this is all a plot by the Government and its exams watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), to avoid allegations of grade inflation and slipping standards – appears to have been dented because the complaints concentrate on one exam board, rather than all the big three. There is a mechanism for sorting out this type of controversy, which is for the QCA to investigate. That it has duly done.

So far so good, you might think, but headteachers' organisations are unhappy at leaving the investigation to the QCA. It has both a responsibility for validating all the exam courses in the first place and then for monitoring the work of the exam boards to ensure standards are maintained. In effect, it is policing what it has already approved and some heads now believe there is a role for a new body – an exams ombudsman or some kind of equivalent of Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, which is responsible for inspecting schools. Schools would be able to lodge an appeal against grades with such a body.

John Dunford, the general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: "I am extremely concerned about this and we need to think about the effects on individuals of the loss of confidence in the exam system. If initial inquiries through the usual channels such as the Department for Education and Skills prove unsatisfactory then we will expect a proper independent inquiry. The QCA is far too close to the Government for allegations as serious as this.''

Edward Gould, the master of Marlborough College, Wiltshire and the chairman of HMC, put it more succinctly. "Letting the QCA carry out the investigation into exam fixing is like putting the fox into the chicken run to count the chickens.''

So what happens now? Representatives of the HMC will meet Dr Ron McLone, chief executive of the OCR, on Thursday evening to discuss their grievances with him. They have already warned that if they are not satisfied with the outcome of the meeting they intend to take the matter further and seek a meeting with ministers.

For their part ministers are dismissing as "absolute rubbish'' any suggestion of undue pressure on the exam boards to mark papers down.

Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education, believes the QCA is the right body to hold an investigation into what has happened. She responded to calls for an independent inquiry by saying: "I am very happy for the QCA to carry out their role in this. They are the exam watchdog body and I want them to do this. It's no good having them and then whenever there's a problem saying we don't want them to do their job."

The HMC, though, has not sought to take its concerns to the QCA, preferring instead to deal with the individual exam board and, if it remains dissatisfied, to go directly to the Government.

If the OCR fails to convince the headmasters and headmistresses that its marking of the three papers was fair, demands for an independent investigation will be supported by the HMC. On the face of it, OCR has a job on its hands – the gap between a projected A grade and a U grade seems to the heads to be too wide for the exam boards' explanation – that the A2 work was just a little bit more demanding than they had been prepared for – to be plausible.

Pressure on the Government will also be increased by Damian Green, the Conservative education spokesman, who seized on a government statement over the weekend that no "specific'' instructions were issued to the exam boards. What, he asked, was meant by the word "specific''?

And that is the question a growing number of bodies think can only adequately be answered by some kind of independent investigation.

CREDIBILITY GAP: 'IT CAN'T BE RIGHT WHEN 14 OF 20 PUPILS IN A CLASS FAIL THEIR COURSEWORK'

When many of James Lacey's classmates start their degree courses next week he will be working in Marks & Spencer to fund a gap year he has been forced to take.

The 18-year-old's hopes of a university place were dashed this summer when his psychology A-level coursework was awarded a U grade, a failure.

"It took a while for it to really sink in," he said. "Something has gone wrong. It's not my fault, but it has wasted a year of my life."

Although he had been predicted an A in psychology, his coursework failure lowered his overall grade to a C.

James had planned to study psychology at Manchester University but needed to achieve at least ABB grades. Without his poor coursework performance, James would have achieved the A in psychology as well as B grades in geography and statistics.

But the BBC grades he was awarded were also not enough for his second choice of university, Birmingham, which demanded three Bs.

"It was immediately obvious that something had gone very wrong with our results," James said. "Fourteen of the 20 students in my class got Us for their coursework, which can't be right. The day of the results was really awful. It was so upsetting. A lot of my class were in tears. It was pretty terrible."

James, who studied at Knights Templar School in Baldock, Hertfordshire, is having his coursework module re-marked but the new result will not be ready in time for him to start university this autumn.

He now plans to work until January to raise money for a three-month trip to New Zealand.

He is furious at the allegations that the exam board might have deliberately lowered the coursework results. "If it's true they have marked down the results then I think that's pretty disgusting," he said.

"That they could do that and waste a year of my life just because they wanted to tamper with the results would be totally wrong."