A printing error left English papers incomplete

Seven lines from a poem were missing from the English Literature paper set by the Welsh Joint Education Committee, taken by candidates in Wales.

WJEC chief executive Wyn Roberts said no candidate would lose marks as a result and promised an investigation into how the mistake had occurred.

He said he did not yet know how many pupils had been affected but the exam, the higher tier English GCSE aimed at the best candidates, had been taken by about 25,000 overall.

Mr Roberts said WJEC's printing machines appeared to have missed the lines out from the poem, The Richest Poor Man in the Valley by Lindsay MacRae, from some papers but not others on a random basis.

Most papers contained the full poem, which was why the error had not been discovered before they were sent to schools, he said.

The board would have to go through every single entry to check whether or not candidates were affected, he added.

The question was worth 10 marks out of a possible 100. "We will write to each of them saying that we will make sure no candidate is disadvantaged," Mr Roberts added.

The news comes a day after a suspected security breach prompted an exam board to change a GCSE paper due to be taken next month.

The OCR board has withdrawn the original version of an English GCSE paper, after it found some pupils appeared to "know too much" about the exam's contents.