'Helpful' householder destroys 300 exam papers

An exam board admitted last night that exam scripts from almost 300 pupils had been destroyed after being sent to the wrong address. The OCR board should have sent the scripts to an examiner for marking, but they arrived at a residential address.

The householder destroyed the papers, believing that was the wish of the exam board. Embarrassed executives said they would assess the pupils on the basis of their coursework during the year.

OCR staff said they had phoned the 16 schools affected by the "inadvertent destruction" of the 293 AS-level sociology papers and told them that no student would be disadvantaged by the blunder.

A statement said: "The householder told OCR that he called another organisation that he thought was the board who suggested he just get rid of them."

A long catalogue of errors has bedevilled this summer's GCSE, AS and A-level examinations. Scripts have been sent to the wrong address or wrongly delivered but the delivery labels are clearly marked with the name and the address of the board, to which the papers can be returned.

Simon Sharp, the head of policy at OCR, said yesterday: "We know mistakes can happen when dealing with over a million pieces of paper each summer. This was a minor error which was turned into a major one by the well-meaning but unfortunate actions by a member of the public."

Dr Ron McLone, chief executive of OCR, added: "I can assure all candidates they will not be disadvantaged by this unfortunate incident. We will use other evidence of their achievement to arrive at a fair outcome. I can assure all schools and colleges taking OCR sociology that, if they have not received a call from OCR today, their candidates are not involved."

Leaders of head teachers said they had never heard of a case before where a householder had destroyed exam scripts. John Dunford, the general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: "Scripts do go astray. We have had the Post Office trying to trace them in the past so, in a sense, this would not be unique. But having a member of the public deliberately destroy them does seem a bit unfortunate."