Eton boy's U grade marked up to A

The row over the future of A-levels escalated today as it emerged that an Eton pupil had his exam paper marked up from "unclassified" to an A after a complaint by his school.

The reversal casts further doubt on the quality of A-level marking. The Examinations Appeals Board, giving judgment in favour of Eton College, said that every A-level examiner, no matter how senior, could make errors.

The episode raised fears that there would be a repeat of last year's A-level fiasco. Thousands of sixth formers had their papers re-graded after exam boards marked them down to prevent the exams appearing "too easy".

In this case, Eton had appealed against the marking of last summer's A-level history exam by OCR, the board at the centre of the regrading debacle.

Eton asked for one module taken by one candidate and graded U (unclassified) to be re-marked. A senior OCR examiner gave it six more marks, which raised it to an E. Eton was not satisfied and appealed, which OCR rejected.

Eton took its case to the independent Examinations Appeal Board. The board ordered a further re-marking and it went up from grade E to A.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said that 47,500 of last summer's A-level entries had been "involved in an inquiry".

Of those, 10,500 were requests for re-marks on the outcome of which a university place depended: 4,492 resulted in a grade change, 98 per cent of them upwards.