Pupils failed after wrong format fiasco

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 8 Dec 2008 at 16:51

Dozens of teenage pupils have failed their Diploma in Digital Applications because their work was submitted in the wrong format.

Pupils from Harry Carlton School in Lincolnshire and an entire class of students from Cotelands School in Lincolnshire failed to achieve the pass mark because examiners were unable to open the documents.

According to the exam board, Edexcel, teachers at both schools failed to instruct pupils to save the work in the format it required.

The schools weren't informed immediately of the compatibility problem - instead the exam board marked the parts of the exam it could open, and then sent a written report to the schools explaining why the pupils had failed the exams after the results were sent out in August.

Asked why the exam board couldn't simply have asked the schools to resubmit the work in the correct format last summer, a spokesman for Edexcel told PC Pro: "It's not our responsibility to do that. That would be interfering with the exam process."

"Teachers get instructions on which formats are acceptable and which aren't," the spokesman added. "From Edexcel's point of view, there were stringent rules we had to follow."

Both schools have now agreed to resubmit the work in the correct format, the Edexcel spokesman claims, although it may come too late for pupils who were banking on the qualification for college places.

Back in May, PC Pro discovered many ICT GCSE students were sitting exam papers which were so badly worded or ambiguous that they baffled PC Pro's team of experienced journalists. Find out more here.