A HEADTEACHER has hit out at an examining board that gave pupils lower marks than it should have in an English exam.

Peter Buchanan, of Dyson Perrins CE High School, in Malvern, said youngsters affected were Year 9s who sat an English Standard Assessment Test in May.

The school became suspicious after finding out that 28 borderline papers had been marked incorrectly.

Borderline papers have to be looked at a second time by a senior assessor and these papers appeared only to be marked once.

When the school queried the matter with the exam board - the Assessment Qualification Alliance - the marks were raised by an average of 20 per cent.

Mr Buchanan said: "Twenty-seven out of the 28 pupils had their marks raised a whole National Curriculum level; they didn't just creep over the border, they were well within the next level."

He said the original results were a disappointment for pupils who had expected to do better and for the school.

"I had to put the results in our prospectus, which prospective parents use to decide where they send their children," he said.

All 188 pupils in Year 9 took the exam and Mr Buchanan will be returning other scripts for a precautionary re-check.

A spokesman for the National Assessment Agency, which oversees the National Curriculum tests, confirmed that a mistake had been made.