Exam results safe after computer 'fried'

The troubled Scottish Qualifications Authority denied yesterday that this year's results were threatened by contractors who had "fried" one of the three computer servers designed to collate exam grades.

The £350,000 IBM machine was destroyed at installation by being connected to the wrong electricity supply at the authority's Edinburgh headquarters, the magazine Computer Weekly reported.

Officials confirmed that the server had been destroyed, but said the problem would not affect the timing of examination results.

A spokesman said the machine was part of two backup systems installed to help avoid a repeat of last year's administrative fiasco when thousands of sixth-formers were cent incorrect or incomplete results.

It had not been used to process exam marks and its destruction would not affect exam grades to be published on 14 August. A spokesman said one back-up machine had been installed to prevent a computer breakdown delaying this year's results. A new second back-up machine would now be installed.

"We were working on a belt and braces," he said. "Now we have belts. There was never any test data on this machine let alone live data. This was nowhere near this year's results and this year's exams. We are very confident that we will have the results ready on time,

"We still have a number of stages to go through between now and 13 August. We have hit every deadline we have been required to and we have great and increasing confidence that we will have everything ready on time."

He said the SQA's IBM computer system had been ordered and installed before the appointment of the former IBM director John Ward as the authority's chairman.