An exam board will be fined £350,000 after more than 1,500 GCSE students received the wrong exam results last year.
The blunder over WJEC’s Eduqas GCSE food preparation and nutrition qualification meant hundreds of pupils had to be issued with the correct grade months later.
Regulator Ofqual also found the body had allowed thousands of papers to be reviewed by the same assessors who had originally marked at least part of them, breaking regulations.
Amanda Swann, Ofqual’s executive director for general qualifications, believes the penalty meted out to the WJEC reflects the “serious nature” of its “failures”.
“Students must be able to trust that their results accurately reflect their performance, and what they know, understand and can do.”
In all, 1,527 youngsters taking the qualification last summer received incorrect results.
The organisation failed “to adjust teachers’ marking of coursework – which made up 50 per cent of the qualification – to ensure results were in line with national standards”.
850 given worse grades
It was found that 847 students received lower grades than they deserved, with 680 benefitting from inflated results. Just over 17,600 did not need to be changed.
Those with worse marks were issued with the correct ones in October 2024. The WJEC decided those with higher marks “should keep them to avoid unfairly penalising students who may have already used those results”.
Ofqual is set to fine WJEC £175,000 for the case. The exam board will be ordered to cough up a further £175,000 for allowing 3,926 exam papers between 2017 and 2023 “to be reviewed by the same assessors who had originally marked at least part of them”.
One student had their grade increased last year following an independent review. WJEC also issued “credit notes as financial compensation to schools and colleges, for all affected reviews, totalling just over £219,000”.
Ofqual said the awarding body has “admitted the breaches, fully accepted responsibility, taken steps to prevent the problems happening again, and engaged fully with” the regulator.
A WJEC spokesperson said the organisation takes “full responsibility and acknowledge[s] that we did not meet the usual high standards expected of us”.
“We would like to sincerely apologise to the learners affected by these incidents.
“We want to reassure learners and centres that we have undertaken a thorough review of our processes and implemented appropriate measures to ensure such incidents do not occur again in the future.”
Earlier this year, WJEC was awarded licenses worth up to £13.9 million for two construction T Levels previously run by City and Guilds.
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