Wait for results is over at long last

Exam board Edexcel has promised to issue students at the Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, in Darlington, with the marks after admitting that the tapes had gone missing.

The Northern Echo exclusively revealed yesterday that the college was still awaiting the results of 12 pupils' French AS-level oral exams, which were taken in the summer.

Thanks to calls by reporters to the exam board, the tapes were found and rushed to an examiner last night for re-marking.

The college had originally sent five pupils' exams to be remarked, and after their grades were increased, staff decided to send the other remaining 64 papers to examiners for re-marking. Edexcel sent back the results of 52 pupils but failed to return the grades of another 12 students. College principal David Heaton made numerous calls to the board but the results were never sent back.

He told the exam board that the work of the 12 students had been on the original five tapes that they had been sent.

Edexcel made a public apology to the college and to pupils.

A spokeswoman said: "We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to the college and to the students.

"The tapes had gone missing. The mistake happened because the tapes had been sent to us in two different batches.

"The work of 12 candidates was on the original five tapes that had been sent to us for re-marking. They were still with the prior examiner so they became separated from the second batch. We re-marked the larger batch of tapes and sent them back to the college.

"The work of the 12 students was on the first lot of tapes and they had not been re-marked so we couriered them over to a new examiner last night to be done."

Mr Heaton said: "This is excellent news. It's amazing. I am very pleased. There has been a lot of uncertainty for pupils for so long. We told Edexcel the work was on the original five tapes. Their problem is their work load has doubled in the last year, but that's no excuse."