Apology for A-level exam that asked the impossible

Students who found the first question of their A-level physics exam impossible learnt yesterday that it really was impossible.

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance admitted that the question, asking students to calculate about the gravitational force on a lunar landing module orbiting the moon, did not make sense: a crucial figure, the radius of the moon, had been omitted.

Students at the Newman school in Carlisle, some of the 3,000 to take the examination nationwide, said the error had put them off their stride.

Jackie Wilson, 17, said she had left the exam hall in tears half way through because she was so upset at not being able to answer the question on an area which she had revised heavily.

"I spent so long on that one question. I didn't even think it would be wrong," she said. "Because we spent longer on that very first question we had less time to do the others."

Another student at the school, Gordon Priestley, said: "It just started off the exam really badly. We all came out of that one thinking we had completely failed." Both students need high grades in physics in order to take up university places.

In the question, the students were given the distance from the module to the surface moon, but not to the centre. It required them to use the equation F=mv<+>2 /r to obtain the right figure. But they were unable to calculate the value of r.

Allan Riddick, a physics teacher at the school who was invigilating at the exam, told Fraser Robinson, head of the physics department, that he was not able to do the first question.

It was only after half an hour's work after the examination that they realised the question was wrong.

Mr Robinson said: "You automatically think it's you. It's a standard question which they have practised and practised and practised. It was for them a simple equation and they know they can do it."

He said AQA should make the paper void and award grades based on students' other results.

George Turnbull, spokesman for AQA, apologised for the error but said the paper would not be declared void.

"We can't say categorically what is going to happen because we don't know the full circumstances yet. It is one mark that is at stake.

"But the bottom line is that students will not be penalised for someone else's mistake and we will do whatever is necessary to ensure that doesn't happen."

Schools whose students felt the mistake affected them should inform the exam board. Their submissions would be taken into account when the final marks were calculated.

Mr Turnbull said the exam paper would have been set by an examiner, checked by another to ensure it was standard with the syllabus, reviewed by a committee and then taken by someone else in a test run. He could not say at what point the mistake had been made.

The case emerged days after an A-level exam paper was leaked to a student in west London on the day before it was due to be taken amid allegations it was being sold for £400.