By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor
The Department of Education has blamed a “rogue marker” for the online leak of a grammar, punctuation and spelling test.
The test is being taken by 600,000 ten and eleven-year-olds.
The BBC said a DfE source blamed an “active campaign by those people opposed to our reforms to undermine these tests”.
The answers to the test appeared Monday night for four hours on a password-protected website. Only three weeks ago a primary school exam was also published prior to the exam. This recent exam calamity is heaping pressure on the Government who have already had to back down over forcing every school to be an academy.
Labour’s shadow education secretary Lucy Powell said the leak was a further “body blow to parent and teacher confidence” in how the primary testing system was being run.
The DfE source said: “While the test doesn’t appear to have leaked into the public domain and can go ahead, a rogue marker did attempt to leak the test’s contents.”
The education department said the test has not been compromised and the results will still stand. They claim less than a hundred people could have had access when it had been published and that it had not been put into the public domain.
A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “We are aware that Pearson, the external marking supplier responsible for Key stage 2 tests, published the key stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test on its secure marker site for a short period of time.
“The site can only be accessed by Pearson’s approved markers, all of whom are under secure contract.
“Any distribution of materials constitutes a clear breach of that contract.”
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