The heads of two major exam boards admitted teenagers were left “stressed and anxious” after thousands of exam results were delayed this summer.
The leaders of OCR and Pearson exam boards made a personal apology in front of MPs after many students taking vocational qualifications failed to be given grades on results days in August.
More than 10,000 BTEC results and 3,200 Cambridge Technical results were handed out late, delaying students from confirming college and university places and excluding some from the university clearing system.
Multiple errors were also found in papers, including a question that was inaccessible to colourblind pupils and a map of Africa labelling Gabon as the Republic of Congo.
MP Robert Halfon, chair of the education select committee, accused exam boards of treating students taking vocational qualifications as second class citizens.
He said exam boards had not done enough to improve the situation for vocational students “because you are all graduates.” He said: “It’s typical of how we treat students who take vocational qualifications in this country”, adding if academic qualifications such as A-Levels had been delayed the exams regulator would have “gone mad”.
Jill Duffy, Chief Executive of OCR, said: “I want to apologise profusely to any student that didn’t receive the Cambridge technical result on results day. We did deliver the vast majority of Cambridge technical results, 39,000 on results day.
“But I know from the calls I had personally with teachers and students who were waiting for a result that this was adding to their stress and anxiety, and I deeply regret that…We are at the moment running an internal review to see what went wrong this year to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Mike Howells from Pearson, said: “The first thing I want to do on behalf of Pearson is to apologise to everybody affected. I personally am very sorry at the distress this caused for many students and their families.
“Any delay in a result is unacceptable as far as I am concerned.
“Like OCR we take full accountability for our role in that.
“We are also in the midst of an investigation into exactly what happened.”
MPs also heard that exam boards are investigating a number of cases of malpractice in private schools. It follows concerns that results rocketed in private schools under the teacher assessment system.
Mr Halfon said after exams were reintroduced this year, the proportion of top grades in private schools fell further than in state schools.
He said: “People have suggested this is evidence of private schools gaming the teacher assessed grading system.”
Jo Saxton, chief regulator for Ofqual said the watchdog takes all allegations of malpractice and cheating extremely seriously and there are “ongoing investigations”, but comparisons between 2021, when grades were decided by teacher assessment, and 2022, when exams were reintroduced, is hard because it is a “totally different form of assessment.”
She added: “It is one of the reasons I am incredibly glad we were able to reinstate exams. I think it proves exams are the fairest form of assessment.”
