TENS of thousands of students are likely to have their grades reviewed, the head of the inquiry into this summer's A-level exams fiasco said today.

A total of 31 subjects are affected - all but seven of them involving exams set by the Oxford and Cambridge and RSA (OCR) exam board.

Chairman Mike Tomlinson said the re-grading process should be completed by October 15, four days later than the deadline his inquiry gave.

Subjects affected include English Literature papers set by the Assessment and Qualifications Authority and OCR, French set by all three exam boards, including Edexcel and Edexcel's and AQA's Spanish.

The re-grading will cover at least 104 individual AS and A2 units out of a total of 1,438, for which the total number of entries was at least 304,205.

Based on the fact that this year's school leavers took a total of six units, it is thought that the minimum number of candidates affected would be about 50,000.

The news was immediately welcomed in North Yorkshire.

Stephen Smith, the head teacher of Fulford School, said: "There is going to be relief that the pupils affected know their grades are going to be looked at, but on the other hand there will be a degree of frustration and anger as well.

"There will be students in the country who have missed places at university who might find that they actually should have been successful.

"The timescale that has been set for re-marking sounds very quick and I am amazed they are able to do it, but it is good news."

Mr Tomlinson found no evidence of political interference by ministers to make A-levels appear tougher, but ruled that a lack of understanding about standards of the new version introduced in 2000 ran right through the system.

The second report of Mr Tomlinson's inquiry, due in November, will focus on what needs to be done to prevent the drama of the last few weeks from happening again.

Updated: 14:19 Wednesday, October 02, 2002