OCR apologises for 2011 marking errors

As many as 4,000 marking mistakes could have occurred during the awarding of OCR’s summer 2011 examinations, Ofqual has said.

The exams watchdog found that 1,370 “mistakes in adding up” occurred across 100,000 scripts from the summer 2011 exam series. The mistakes led to changes to 251 unit or qualification grades.

However, many scripts were destroyed in line with normal processes and before the full scale of the problem was known. As a result, Ofqual does not know how many more mistakes might have occurred.

Its report into the incident, published this week, states: “Based on its checks in 2012, OCR has estimated that there may have been in the region of a further 2,650 mistakes which were not found and rectified (in 2011). Given the proportion of changes made through the scripts which were checked, it is likely that around 500 of these would have led to unit grade changes.”