A headteacher has said her school’s GCSE grades are back where they should be after extensive re-marks.

Mountbatten School’s executive headteacher Heather McIlroy criticised the standard of exam marking after a record number of appeals over grades.

Many students have seen their grades rise and the school's headline figures have jumped accordingly. Following re-marks, 71 per cent of students achieved the benchmark figure of five GCSE passes at A*- C Grade, and 60 per cent gained five GCSE passes including English and Mathematics. On results day in August the school had declined to reveal the percentage of students who achieved five A* to Cs including in maths and English because of “outstanding queries” over the results and grade boundaries.

Mrs McIlroy said: “The Mountbatten School has a well deserved reputation for academic excellence. Whilst we are pleased that these results now more accurately reflect the hard work of our students, their parents, and our teachers, we should not still be challenging poorly marked scripts in late October. At the culmination of their secondary education, all students deserve their exams to be marked with reliability, consistency and integrity.”

The head said that rogue marking could disproportionately affect one school particularly if the subject affected is taken by all students. “English Language marking this year has been nothing short of shocking” she commented.

“We have made strong representations to the AQA exam board about their need to put the necessary quality assurance measures in place so this does not happen again. It should not be a matter of luck whether a school is assigned an unreliable exam marker. All students in all schools deserve reliable, accurate marking in all their subjects.”

Chris Cox, Mountbatten’s head of school, said that 50 students out of 280 had their English papers re-marked and in more than half of those cases their grade had risen.

He said that poor marking could mean that Mountbatten students, now at sixth form college, had been studying for re-sits unnecessarily.

Mr Cox said that English was not the only area of worry, there were also serious concerns over History and Geography and in one case, a language subject, the candidate had seen their grade rise from D to B because the marker had added up the marks incorrectly.

Nationally the number of inquiries questioning GCSE and A-level grades was up by 48 per cent to 450,500, according to exam watchdog Ofqual.

Roughly one in every 33 exam paper marked this year resulted in an inquiry.

More than 45,000 exam grades from this summer have been changed after schools challenged the results.

Romsey School also reported that its headline results had improved after challenges were made.

Executive headteacher, Jonathan de Sausmarez said: “Romsey School, whilst achieving good results this year, still felt that a number of students received results that did not match with the expectations of the school. Those students, particularly in maths and English, were remarked by the examination board. “As a result, we have had a number of students who have moved to the top A grade in addition to students moving at the crucial D to C grade. Overall, this means that our headline result has now risen two per cent to 68 per cent and we are still awaiting one outcome which if successful would raise this further to 69 per cent.”