British Council statement on Egypt A-level exams

13 June 2012

Background:

• Due to a storage error at our Cairo office, a small number of papers relating to three future A-level exam papers were mistakenly sent out to schools in Egypt, along with past exam papers.
• We became aware of the problem within 24 hours, and immediately retrieved all the exam papers and notified Edexcel.
• While there is no firm evidence to suggest that the Maths paper has been seen by anyone unauthorised to, the packages in which they were contained had been opened and therefore could potentially have been viewed. All the Biology and Chemistry papers were in envelopes that had not been opened. We have been working closely with Edexcel ever since, to determine the best way forward.
• The exam papers in question were due to be sat on Thursday 21st June. This exam will go ahead as scheduled with a replacement paper.
• We have launched an investigation to determine how this happened, and to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Mark Stephens, the British Council’s Director in Egypt, said:

“We take the security of our exams operation extremely seriously, and deeply regret this error. We acted as soon as we became aware and, as a result, we can be certain that no exam candidates will either benefit or be disadvantaged. We deliver 80,000 exams in Egypt every year – this has never happened before, and we’re already taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”