MORE than 100 former GCSE students at a County Durham school are to have their exams marked again.

Examiners agreed to re-mark 116 GCSE English Language papers after staff at St Bede's RC Comprehensive School at Lanchester queried the results.

Examination board AQA has already re-graded 27 AS level English Literature papers, taken by sixth form students, after a review by the board found four pupils had been badly under graded.

None of the GCSE youngsters will lose out in the re-marking. If any student is awarded a lower grade it will be ignored. If a pupil is given a higher grade he or she will be granted the higher mark.

AQA will re-mark the papers for no charge as part of a quality control exercise.

The AS level papers have already been re-graded. One 17-year-old who has applied to study at Oxford University had one mark re-graded to an A. Another pupil was found to have been under-marked by 22 points.

Headmaster at the school, George Dunn, said the entire examination system needed to be reviewed. He said: "Our staff know our pupils' abilities and the GCSE grades just didn't tally with the pupils' abilities. This kind of thing is not unusual at all. I would bet you anything you like that if you spoke to just about any school in County Durham they would say they have experienced problems.

"It is good that the examiners have a quality control system and are dealing with this, but I would say it is worrying. You simply can't play Russian roulette in this way with kids' exam marks. "

AQA spokesman George Turnbull confirmed the GCSE papers are to be re-marked. He said: "Mistakes do happen and when they do we apologise and get it put right.