AN INQUIRY has been demanded after a Manchester headteacher discovered more than half her pupils had been given the wrong exam grade.

Staff at Whalley Range High School for Girls sent back all 280 key stage three English papers to be remarked when the results were disappointingly low. They were staggered when 170 were upgraded.

Now Shadow Education Secretary Damien Green is calling for an inquiry into examination marking of key stage three papers nationwide amid fears that Whalley Range could be just the tip of the iceberg.

Headteacher at Whalley Range Dame Jean Else said that, with the margin of error, the results could no longer be trusted.

She fears that many schools may have just accepted the results awarded by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which administers the exams on behalf of the government, without question.

Appalling

Now she plans to write to the QCA to express her anger at the errors and the authority's failure to correctly assess so many papers. She wants them to look at the level of training, the quality of marking and the moderation of scripts.

"When we got the key stage three results in May they were a major shock and we thought that quite clearly there were a number of mistakes," said Dame Jean.

"In total, we sent back 280 papers and 170 of them were upgraded. We put our teachers and pupils through all the pressure of the exams and we expect them to be marked properly. This marking is appalling."

As a result of the remarks, Dame Jean says the proportion of pupils reaching the government benchmark grade of level five has risen from 60 to 70 per cent.

And that will have an impact on the school's performance in relation to government performance indicators.

Mr Green said: "This level of re-marking is obviously very disturbing and suggests that something big has gone wrong.

"I will write to the QCA saying that there has been this big problem at Whalley Range and asking them to investigate. That this has happened in just one school clearly seems unlikely.

"Confidence in the exam system is at a low because of the chaos that surrounded A-levels last summer and if we discover there's a problem with key stage tests it will further damage confidence."

The results of key stage three tests - which are taken by every 13-year-old - are used by the government to assess the progress of local education authorities, in the compilation of annual school league tables and in calculating financial rewards for schools through the school achievement award scheme.

George Strachan, Manchester secretary for the National Union of Teachers, said marking mistakes such as this one strengthen the argument to abolish the tests completely.

He said: "You do have to consider whether if other schools put in similar numbers of papers what the results would be. We believe the tests narrow education and drive it the wrong way, but this is further evidence to stop them."

Mike Arnold, regional officer for the National Association of Headteachers, said: "This is extremely serious and I am concerned that there should've been this kind of upgrading.

"I am not aware that this is a national issue. It may just be as a result of an individual marker if they have all been done by one marker."

A spokeswoman for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said: "QCA is confident that the vast majority of marking of key stage tests is robust.

Inadequate

"Markers are given extensive training and supervision throughout the marking process. Unfortunately some amendments to marking have to be made and in such cases the future of the marker is reviewed."

But one examiner said it was wrong to simply blame individual error.

"This number of re-marks can't simply be blamed on one examiner because there are so many stages in the key stage three process for checking. I am never going to mark for key stage three again. I really question the validity of the exams.

"They have changed the key stage three specifications and I think entirely inadequate training was given, so there weren't consistent standards applied."