STUDENTS at a North Yorkshire school wasted precious time and money by needlessly resitting AS exams, it has emerged.

The pupils at King James's School, Knaresborough, had actually scored well when they first sat the exams in psychology.

But 80 per cent were wrongly given low grades in the papers - and the error was only discovered after they had resat the exams at their own cost.

Out of 75 students who took AS psychology exams at the school last summer 63 have now received upgrades.

More than 30 students resat the exams last month - and many of these did not need to do so.

In one case a student who received a U-grade resat the exam, but later discovered he should have originally been given a B grade.

Julian Pinches, head of psychology at the school, has now written to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to complain.

He said: "I am very frustrated, it has taken so long and the kids' time has been wasted. They had revised for their resit exams when some of them had A grades."

The school contacted the exam board, OCR, in August and asked for a sample number to be remarked. In October the school requested all of the papers to be remarked after looking at them in more detail.

Two months later OCR contacted the school saying they did not believe the papers should be remarked. But the school insisted and the papers were looked and the upgraded marks were returned last week.

Mr Pinches said he found it very difficult to reassure students who will be sitting exams this summer as he does not feel reassured himself.

He said: "The checks did not work in the summer, how are we supposed to know it will not happen again this summer."

He said he did not know at this stage whether university places had been affected by the blunder.

Harrogate MP Phil Willis is leading a Liberal Democrat rebellion against student "top-up" fees.

The party's education spokesman said allowing elite universities such as York to charge up to £3,000 per year would create a "two-tier" higher education system.

He has tabled a House of Commons motion signed by 41 of his Parliamentary colleagues calling for a rethink.

Mr Willis warned debt - and the fear of debt - was a significant barrier to poorer youngsters going to university.

He said: "The Government should abandon the idea of top-up fees and to abolish

tuition fees for undergraduates throughout the United Kingdom."

Updated: 12:18 Friday, February 07, 2003