At least 50,000 students will be affected and they will be told by 15 October whether their results have been changed.

Thousands of students have been anxiously waiting to see if their results will be affected by the re-grades.

Some have already opted to take second or third choice university places on the basis of their existing grades.

And many others are taking an unscheduled gap year because they failed to make their university grades.

What should you do if you are waiting for papers to be re-graded? What does this mean for the future of the A-level?

Your questions were answered in a live forum with George Turnbull from the country's largest exam board, the Assessment and Qualification Alliance.

Transcript

Manisha Tank:
Welcome to the Six Forum. I'm Manisha Tank. Thanks for joining us.

Head teachers are warning that the A-level row may have affected around 100,000 students across the country and now we'll have to wait a couple of more weeks before they can find out if they actually have the correct AS and A-level grades.

An inquiry into the fiasco concludes that 320,000 exam entries will have to be re-checked and perhaps some given new grades. Joining me for this forum is George Turnbull who is the spokesman for the AQA examining board - one of the three being asked to review papers.

We have an e-mail from Mark in Nottingham: Can you explain the difference between papers being reviewed and papers being re-graded? There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding about this entire issue.

George Turnbull:
I think there is confusion. Review, just applies to the fact that we're looking at some of these examination papers again. The real thing is looking at the materials where the lines were drawn which would determine the boundaries and the grades themselves and that really is the area of what the inquiry is about.

There are some subjects from other boards which are being looked at in particular and there will be some outside observers. But it's not a case of remarking scripts - a lot of people think that it is. I think some of the numbers that are being put about might be slightly exaggerated. I know in my own board, it's only 300 students that will be affected and may not be affected at all. So I am not sure if these figures are correct.

Manisha Tank:
An e-mail from Apurva, UK: Are all the exam papers being reviewed?

I know you can at least speak from your exam board.

George Turnbull:
Yes, they are not all being reviewed and there are only two subjects and in each case it's only one grade boundary. As I said, there is only about 300 students that will be affected by that, so it's not very much. That's out of over three-quarters of a million awards given this year in A-levels and AS-levels - so it's not a lot. I don't know about the other examining boards but it's certainly not all the subjects that are being looked at, only some.

Manisha Tank:
An e-mail from Peter Chubb: What do you do when exam results are bizarre? If you are getting "U"s when you've expected "A"s and yet your subjects have not been on Mike Tomlinson's list and re-grades have proved a waste of money. Are we to just sit back and accept our results even with all the scandals?

George Turnbull:
There's not very much you can do at this stage. Remarks are not waste of money because if we do find evidence to suggest you should get a higher grade, that is in fact operated. Students do perform differently in different examination papers and some may get an "E" or an unclassified - that does happen quite regularly across all the entries that we get.

The first thing that should have happened was that he should have taken it up with the school and the school would have taken it up with the examining board. It's probably too late to do that now but I guess from what you've said, he may already have done that and has not received a higher grade. Well, that will be because he didn't have the evidence to suggest that he should have a higher grade.

But there is a further appeal system which can be gone through if a school wants to take that route and it can eventually go to an independent appeals body completely and separate from the examining boards themselves. So there are plenty of things that can be done but they've got to be done at the right time.

Manisha Tank:
An anonymous text message: I have just started college and I'm beginning my A-levels. It is a little worrying that if this has happened once, it may happen again. So who decides the grade boundaries?

George Turnbull:
It's mostly teachers in fact and the people involved with constructing an examination paper which is likely to be 18 months before the examination is taken. A lot of what of you're seeing this year is because of the newness of the examination. Every time there is a new examination system introduced, there is always a certain number of teething problems.

I know that doesn't help individual students and we are concerned about individual students and we want to ensure that they have actually got the right grade for the work that they submit to us. But I'm sure you'll see a much different situation next year once the examination has settled down. Teachers will be more sure of what they're teaching and exam boards will have been through the whole system with the 24 million examination scripts that have got to be marked - that's including GCSE - during the summer.

It's a tremendous operation which has to take place every year. I think most of what's happening this year is to do with the newness of the examination and the fact there are so many other people coming in with different political and other agendas to get their case put forward - the whole thing has become a little mixed up and a little bit confused.

Manisha Tank:
You've mentioned what is obviously very important in all of this, the fact that you have a slightly different system in operation this time around. We've had a text message in from Chris Fawcett in Preston: Why can't exams keep the same boundary levels every year instead of changing them to suit the pupils of that year?

One level for all perhaps. If you had some kind of system where you were a bit more rigid on these things maybe political influences wouldn't make such a difference.

George Turnbull:
It would be great if we had it the way that it used to be done and this is why the numbers didn't increase each year because a certain percentage - say 7% - used to get "A"s. It didn't matter how good the students were in any one year, it put them into rank order. It didn't say anything about how they were performing in schools or whether performance in schools was actually improving.

What we do nowadays is set the boundaries so that the standard required to achieve a particular grade doesn't move from year to year and if the students perform better then more of them will get the higher grades. So you can actually see true performance and change in the school population and that's what we're actually seeing now.

Manisha Tank:
An e-mail from Charlotte M, Birmingham: Will the AS exams taken by students this year be re-graded and will this affect which universities will offer you places?

George Turnbull:
This has all been part of what is taking place at the moment. The review is not just looking at the A2 part of the A-level, it's looking at AS as well. There's nothing really to worry about - everything actually is in control. I can understand the anxiety that the students have. But really it's a very sound system and it's a very robust system. It's possibly the most closely monitored, tightly-controlled examination system in the world.

Manisha Tank:
Sheila Stewart, Fife, UK: My daughter sat AS-levels earlier this year - January and June - and got two As for exams in psychology but only got an "E" in her course work when she had been estimated an "A" or a "B". The exam board in question was AQA, so can you tell me if coursework papers for AS-levels with your exam board are going to be looked at as well?

George Turnbull:
No, they're not. We've only got two subjects to look at - one is English Literature and one is French Oral. I presume that she has taken it up with the examining board where they could look again at the course and see whether indeed that was the correct grade that was issued.

Manisha Tank:
I have to ask this question as often with these sorts of scenarios many people are saying - there's no smoke without fire. You mentioned political influence. Jo in England has written in saying: Can we really believe that there was no tampering at all with students' grades when the problem seems so extensive?

George Turnbull:
I didn't actually mean political with a capital "P" necessarily - there are groups that don't like the A-level for example and they would like to see it go and they would like to see a baccalaureate examination issued instead. That was nothing to do at all with the original issue that was brought to our attention.

So as to whether we can agree that there was no tampering - I can say absolutely there was no tampering. We were under no pressure - and I speak particularly from the AQA - we were absolutely under no pressure whatsoever from any outside body or agency to do anything different this year than we had done previously. We think it is an important aspect of education which we carry out from year-to-year and we take it very, very seriously. We have no other axe to grind other than to make sure that the grades are on a par with those issued the previous year.

Manisha Tank:
We've got the results now of our on-line vote that our viewers have been taking part in. We've been asking you how you feel about the papers being remarked - 55% of you are saying that you would not trust re-graded papers. Now as someone who represents an examination board, how does this make you feel?

George Turnbull:
There has been a lot of adverse publicity. Obviously the trust of the examining boards and the accountability of the examination has been damaged and it's a case of building that up again.

We'll leave no stone unturned to ensure that the students actually have the grades that they deserve - from the evidence that we have in front of us. That's our main task every day - that's what we try to do honestly and above board. The system is transparent, we have nothing to hide and we can't do any more than do our best and we've been doing that over the years. You can be trusting of this system more so than any other. There is no system which is as open as the A-level and GCSE system in this country.

Manisha Tank:
John and Hilary e-mail in from North Yorkshire: Our daughter has completed her A-level German this summer and we've requested a remark of her coursework because the grade she received was significantly lower than she was led by her teachers to believe it would be and her other papers would indicate. We've been told that it would cost more than £130 to have this done. Can you explain why this is the case when the cost of remarking the paper is approximately £26 in all other cases?

George Turnbull:
It is because of the coursework element. We don't mark all of the coursework in any case, it's marked by the teacher. We take a sample of the coursework and if they want a remark they can't get it done for an individual candidate, it's got to be done for all of the school. So it's got to be re-moderated again and sometimes schools are reluctant to do that for individual candidates because it can knock the marks down for the school as a whole.

But that's why it costs the amount of money that it does. We've got to send somebody out to the school, they've got to look at a sample of the coursework again and it's not just a case of looking at one individual script as it would be in the normal situation.

Manisha Tank:
So effectively this family is having to pay more for what is a large volume of students?

George Turnbull:
Well I am not sure that the family themselves would have to pay - it's normally paid for by the school. The good news is of course that if they are upgraded then of course they get the money back because we have made a mistake and we own up to it and produce the right grade.

Manisha Tank:
Angela Stone, Bristol: Could it possibly be the same for GCSEs? My son did not do as well as his mocks indicated. The same examination board did the A-levels as well as the GCSEs.

George Turnbull:
I really honestly don't think so. I think it's more to do with the new examination being introduced this year for the first time. It's not to say examination boards are perfect - we do make mistakes. There are human errors which do occur. This is why we have a system of allowing the schools to be able to appeal on their results.

As I said before, it doesn't matter when we find that there's a mistake been made by the examining board, we will produce a higher grade if we do actually find that - even though it may be months after the examination. That doesn't happen very often but it has happened in the past. Sometimes the school doesn't even know that we're doing a remark and it may be part of the research that we're doing within the examining board. But if we find any reason to upgrade a student, we always will do that.

Manisha Tank:
Leesa Vere-Stevens, Harrogate: Would a student whose grades had been changed be able to sue the exam board?

George Turnbull:
Well, I am not a lawyer but we've become a very litigious society and we're going towards the American way. In examinations the Americans actually have ticked box examinations - nobody else makes any judgments, nobody takes a professional view. It would be sad if we did actually get to that case. There's certainly lawyers who would be interested in taking cases up.

But sure, if you found that there is something which you feel that you have been disappointed in or you have got a case, you obviously need to consult with a solicitor. But I don't think it's an easy matter and the boards have been exonerated through two inquiries as not having done anything wrong and so it's difficult to know who to actually blame. If the boards are not to blame then somebody else must be, you might say. It could be a long and costly process.