The country’s largest exam board AQA is investigating reports an A-level chemistry paper was leaked before students sat the exam.
After sitting chemistry paper two this morning, students on Twitter said they recognised questions from alleged “leaked” papers that had been posted online.
Schools Week also understands at least one school has raised concerns with AQA too after students said they had seen the paper before.
An AQA spokesperson told Schools Week: “We’re very disappointed to hear that some students may have seen our A-level Chemistry paper 2 before the exam.
“Our exams integrity team is investigating and will take any action necessary, including working with the police.
“We realise students might be concerned, but we’d like to reassure them that there are lots of things we can do to make sure no-one has an unfair advantage – which could include monitoring for any students with suspicious performance on this paper.”
There were suggestions AQA was alerted to the leak before the exam. The board said any claims it had time to replace the paper before the exam are not true.
It follows a series of problems with advanced information and mistakes in exam papers. Ofqual chief regulator Jo Saxton said these had cause students “distress”.
In 2019, two people were arrested after an Edexcel A-level maths paper was allegedly leaked online.
Police were also called in that year to investigate the potential leak of an AQA GCSE religious studies paper.
As an aqa A-level Chemistry student myself we need real clarification from the exam board about how this will effect grade boundaries. Realistically they will not be able to track every student who viewed these questions before sitting the exam this morning, 20th June 2022. Aqa must have been aware of this leak days before we sat this paper and should’ve sent a replacement paper. To be quite frank the way that the AQA exam board has treated this A-level series in comparison to other exam boards has been shocking. From 5 mark questions on Speciation in Biology to a 6 mark question on organic identification in Chemistry today, both of which was not on the advanced information.
These are the first exams for two years. The A-level students sitting these exams have been most impacted: interrupted schooling through two exam series, centre-assessed GCSE grades and a glut of applications making university offers difficult to obtain.
Is it too much to expect that exam boards, who get paid £millions, actually do what they are being paid to do and do it properly?
This is not particular to this exam board – they should all be hanging their heads in shame at the way they have let down our young people.