A LONG-SUFFERING student was finally told her A-level grade yesterday - five days after thousands of other sixth formers.

Lyndsay Angus, of Darlington, could at last allow herself to celebrate after hearing that she had scored an A in her English language exam.

Lyndsay, a former student of Darlington's Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, had faced an agonising wait after an exam board, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), failed to mark her work on time.

She was one of about 2,000 students across the country who failed to get results on time.

Lyndsay had torn open her A-level results last Thursday to find she had gained an A in biology, B in German, but had "pending" written where her English language grade should have been.

Yesterday, even though she was awarded an A grade, she was still left feeling frustrated that she had not found out why there had been a delay.

Her mother, Rosslyn, said: "I would think the exam board would have had the common decency just to write to her or ring her and let her know what had happened.

"But at the end of the day, she got the right result."