Exam board AQA apologises after error in A-level chemistry exam

A detailed investigation will be carried out to find out how the mistake happened
13th June 2017, 7:00pm

Share

Exam board AQA apologises after error in A-level chemistry exam

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/exam-board-aqa-apologises-after-error-level-chemistry-exam
Thumbnail

Exam board AQA has apologised for including an unanswerable question in its A-level Chemistry paper. 

Pupils sitting the exam this afternoon were told to leave out one of the questions in the paper. 

Schools were contacted about the mistake before today’s exam to ensure students could be told, AQA has said. 

But some pupils on social media claimed that they were only notified in the middle of the exam - and some say they were not told at all: 

Our invigilators didn’t tell us about the mistake so we just corrected it and did it anyway. Fuming #aqachemistry

- zo (@_zelizabeth) June 13, 2017

 

When you only find out you were meant to cross out question 10.3 because of twitter #AQAchemistry

- Yasmin (@YasminB_1) June 13, 2017


how can our exams officer stop the exam midway to say they’ve had a call from aqa about 10.3, bonus marks soon come #aqachemistry

- victoria (@XIIII_) June 13, 2017

 

Pupils will be awarded the two marks from the question, which has had to be discounted.

An AQA spokesperson said: “This shouldn’t have happened and we are sorry it did.

“Each of our exam papers goes through a lot of checks, but unfortunately errors can very occasionally slip through. 

“When they do, we always make sure that students don’t lose out. But one error is still one too many, so we are carrying out a detailed investigation”. 

The mistake came on the same day Tes revealed that exam board OCR had made an error in its Biology A-level paper.

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook.​​

Want to keep reading for free?

Register with Tes and you can read two free articles every month plus you'll have access to our range of award-winning newsletters.

Keep reading for just £1 per month

You've reached your limit of free articles this month. Subscribe for £1 per month for three months and get:

  • Unlimited access to all Tes magazine content
  • Exclusive subscriber-only stories
  • Award-winning email newsletters
Recent
Most read
Most shared