The pupils only found out about the error once the exam was over

Pupils at Highcliffe School, Christchurch, only discovered seven lines were missing from a poem after the exam, on Wednesday, was over.

The Welsh examination board responsible for publishing the paper has said a printing error was to blame.

A second mistake also affected pupils at Gillingham School, Gillingham, where examiners spotted they had handed out the wrong paper 30 minutes into the two-hour test.

Pupils were then issued with the correct paperwork.

A printing error was blamed for the missing lines

Of the 185 exam papers sent to Highcliffe School, 75 had lines missing from a poem.

A "shaft of sunlight" is said to have got involved in the printing process, erasing part of a printing plate.

A total of 178 pupils sat the exam.

Lauren Pulfer, who had lines missing from her exam paper, said: "At the end of the exam there was a poem that you have to analyse, and there were seven lines missing.

"We didn't know until after the exam, when we were all sat discussing it, that there was quite a bit missing."

'Freak occurrence'

Another pupil, Suzy Marsden said: "I thought at first that I had just missed it off myself, but when we all realised, we phoned around to check that it wasn't just us.

"Then we got in contact with the school because we thought if anyone could tell us what was going on then they could."

Wyn Roberts, of the Welsh Joint Education Committee, who published the paper, said steps were being taken to ensure the error would not be repeated.

"Obviously we are checking through all the plates for this summer now, but over the next year we are having some suggestions from the engineers as to how we can make sure this kind of freak occurrence doesn't happen again," he said.

Lauren, Suzy and the other pupils will receive their results on 21 August.

Copies withdrawn

At Gillingham School, pupils were issued with the correct paper 30 minutes into the exam.

The original test papers were withdrawn nationally by exam board AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) earlier this year after copies were stolen from a van.

AQA has told the school the mistake will be taken into account when students' work is marked.