How one student missed out on a place at Oxford

By Nicholas Pyke

For those directly hit by the A-level marking controversy, the consequences are all too obvious. At Bedford School, 18-year-old Michael Herring missed out on a place to read history at Brasenose College, Oxford after one of his final papers was downgraded by the OCR board. Now, he has to wait to see if the result can be overturned, and has deferred going to university until next year.

He is not alone. The disappointment and uncertainty are shared throughout the fee-paying school, drawing in staff, younger pupils, and next year's candidates in particular. "My reaction is mainly anxiety," says Ed Bray, Bedford's 17-year-old head boy. "We have doubts about university applications, as to whether we'll get into our first-choice universities, whether we will get the results that have been predicted by our teachers."

Bedford has serious concerns about a number of subjects, including English and History with OCR, and French with AQA. For the first time, some of its pupils got U grades for their geography coursework. "These are good students who worked hard," says Philip Evans, the Head Master. "We're also concerned about the motivation and morale of the year below. What happened wasn't fair."

Dr Richard Palmer, head of English, believes that overall, his distribution of grades was what he might have expected. But the results seem to have been reached in a random way. "On a paper of 32 candidates, 27 got different grades from the ones predicted," he explains. Nine were two grades lower, and eight were three grades lower. "It seems to me that the marking system is, at its core, amateurish. They haven't got a cohort of experienced and well-qualified markers, and that is why this is happening."