OxBowBusiness

The British way of doing things

The British way of doing things.

On June 3rd the Daily Mirror ran a story about exam papers being leaked.

“TWO A-level exam papers due to be sat next week have been obtained by the Daily Mirror. Students are believed to be buying the stolen questions then selling them on.Subjects affected include A-level maths, economics, business studies, biology and chemistry set by exam boards AQA and Ed-Excel.”

The response from the AQA was:

“ John Mitchell, of AQA, said: "This is a very serious matter because this is a major national exam. We are carrying out an investigation and we have been interviewing a number of students. We want to make sure if anybody had unfair access to these question papers they do not profit by it."

The Business Studies paper is taking place as I write this.

I wondered whether the Exam Boards had issued new papers. I rang a centre and they had not received any.

I rang AQA and spoke to John Mitchell and he said that the AQA ‘were taking every possible step…’ I asked him if replacement papers had been sent down and he said that ‘the Exam Board were taking every possible step’.

This means either Exam Centres I spoke to have surprisingly not received extra copies that mysteriously were sent to other centres  (unlikely) OR papers were not sent out. I pointed out to John Mitchell that the papers if genuine would be passed around, sold on the internet, posted in chat rooms etc etc I myself know several students in Oxford who are very interested in buying these questions – as I am too. If I get them they’re going straight on to the internet and will be told to everyone possible.

It’s important to have a level playing field.

John Mitchell says the papers seen by Daily Mirror are genuine.

So there are presumably several papers for several subjects now circulating.

Time to talk to the newspapers.

The Sun, Mirror and Guardian and Telegraph  were VERY interested. The Times, not so.

Maybe it’s not the British way of doing things, to expose incompetence when we see it but instead to hide it all away and say ‘just a few will be affected’.

Must go now as there are pigs flying past the window….

Chris Sivewright

posted by Duncan Williamson @ 2:34 PM