The beleaguered exam board Edexcel should be "sacked" said headteachers today as the education and skills secretary, Estelle Morris, demanded a speedy explanation of recent errors that have affected thousands of students.
The discovery that 1,000 students at a Kent college have been told that two pages are missing from a multiple choice paper they are sitting today added to the pressure on the board, whose chief executive resigned recently after a barrage of complaints.
Edexcel has been pilloried for setting a maths question in an AS-level paper last week that was impossible to answer.
Ms Morris said her "fury" over the error could only be matched by that of the pupils involved and the teachers who had prepared them for their exams.
"I'm appalled, of course I am, this was a basic mistake," she said as she entered Downing Street for a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Quite simply it seems to me that they did not proof-read properly. That should not have happened, it is not acceptable anywhere."
The government's watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, has provided an interim report and Ms Morris said she was now looking for prompt action from Edexcel to explain how the error could be corrected. "I want a speedy response from Edexcel, hopefully by the end of this week," she said.
Today it also emerged that the board had lost coursework for 20 performing arts students at North Devon College in Barnstaple, Devon.
David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the board should be stripped of its contract to set and mark exams. "If Edexcel have been as incompetent as they appear to have been, I don't see that the government has any option other than to sack them as an examining board.
"The apparent lack of quality assurance and cavalier disregard for the interests of students is breathtaking.
"I also think the government needs to ask serious questions of the QCA and the Joint Council for General Qualifications (the three boards' umbrella body). They must take some responsibility for Edexcel's lack of quality assurance procedures."
Further education colleges are also expressing dissatisfaction and threatening to withdraw their business from Edexcel. More than two thirds said Edexcel delivered exam results late last summer, according to an Association of Colleges survey.
Judith Norrington, the AoC's director of curriculum and qualifications, said colleges could soon vote with their feet and stop using Edexcel altogether. "We have repeatedly warned Edexcel of the problems our members are experiencing. Students' interests have to come first - if Edexcel don't get their act together, colleges will have to look elsewhere."
Edexcel far outstripped the other two exam boards, OCR and AQA, when it came to the complaints about their records, the AoC survey showed. Almost 70% said Edexcel's responsiveness was either poor or very poor, compared with 18% in the case of AQA and just 3% for OCR.
Only 6% rated Edexcel as responsive or extremely responsive, while 66% said its performance over the 2000/01 academic year was poor or very poor, compared with 9% for AQA and 3% for OCR. One college, which did not want to be named, told EducationGuardian.co.uk it was still waiting for results and certificates from last summer.
One of the Barnstaple students, Laura Wood-Vine, told BBC Radio 5 Live: "We sent our portfolios off when they asked us to in March or April last year and we haven't had them returned.
"We need what is in the portfolio to be able to complete the rest of the course next year. There were things in it you don't want to have lost, things you would want to keep forever.
"I want to go to university and do performing arts and that relies on the grades I get."
Laura said Edexcel had written to explain they had lost the portfolios, but it had not apologised.
Laura's mother, Evon, said: "You spend a lot of time and put a lot of energy into your child's education. You concentrate on getting your child to get their work completed, to put everything into it. It lets you down just slightly for them to just calmly announce they lost the portfolio."
She said the students had been told that the missing coursework should not affect their final marks.
"We have been told hopefully they won't be affected, but if the work is needed to finish the course I don't understand how that can be," she said.
Mid-Kent College said the exam board had failed to send two pages of a multiple choice key skills exam in communications and information technology being sat by students today.
The company had said it would send the missing sheets by fax and courier, said Theresa Murray, a departmental manager at the college.
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The papers are at the college in sealed packages, as they should be and of course we haven't opened them.
"The call came last night at 4.45pm telling us that the communication papers had got two pages missing. "I am afraid it does compromise the security arrangements. It does mean that they were printed and sent out without anyone checking.
"With about 1,000 pupils taking communication studies today, the first lot starting at 9am and then two more sittings after that, we need 300 copies, but we are pulling out the stops to minimise disruption to the students."
Ms Murray said the incident followed earlier mistakes by Edexcel, including wrong results and a failure to register entries.
