Police investigate black-market sale of national curriculum test papers

Police have been called in to investigate the sale on the black market of national curriculum test papers due to be sat by 600,000 14-year-olds next month.

Officials from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Government's exams watchdog, said yesterday that the papers might have to be withdrawn and reset. The QCA was alerted to the sale of English and maths papers after a member of the public gave copies of this year's papers to the Daily Mirror, saying he had been offered them for £100. They were immediately passed on to the QCA. A spokesman for the exams watchdog said yesterday: "We are taking this extremely seriously We have various contingencies that could be put into operation. There is a reserve set of papers for the tests should it become necessary to use them."

The test questions have already been delivered to more than 3,000 secondary schools throughout the country, with instructions that they should be locked in a safe and not taken out until an hour before the exam. Spot checks are run at up to one in five schools to ensure no papers have been tampered with.

Headteachers' leaders said the sale of papers showed the mania for testing now gripping the country.

The pressure on schools to do well in the tests – known as key stage three Sats – has grown because of the Government's decision to publish the results in secondary school league tables this year.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: "I think that – at £100 – [these papers] are vastly over-priced. People should recognise the key stage three tests are no more than a check on progress during the early secondary school years." Pupils sit a science test, a maths test and an English test.

"However ... what has happened does reflect on the testing mania into which we have fallen." Unions have called for national curriculum tests to be abolished to allow more creativity in school. This week the National Union of Teachers' annual conference voted to boycott Sats at the ages of 7, 11 and 14 next year in protest at the stress they were placing on teachers and pupils.