Hundreds of primary and secondary schools across the county were thrown into turmoil at the end of last term because of a national marking fiasco which led to the Government cancelling its £156m contract with Educational Testing Service Europe.

And, in a surprise move on Tuesday, Schools Secretary Ed Balls scrapped the Key Stage 3 exams taken by 14-year-olds.

According to data compiled by the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) locally, "almost without exception", the schools who said they sent papers back for remarking have seen marks and levels rise.

Tony Roberts, Lancashire NAHT admin and membership secretary, said: "It has been a complete shambles and now because of the remarking they are not publishing the league tables until March, which is a complete waste of time."

Among those most affected is Moss Side Primary School in Leyland, where headteacher Janis Burdin sent back all 70 English papers sat by her 35 11-year-olds because she was concerned about the "inconsistency in marking," especially in the writing paper.

She said: "When they came back, all but four had had the marks changed. The majority were upped with one or two down.

"Overall there were 21 level changes out of 35 children."

The number of pupils deemed to be at level five, which is above average, went up from 23% to 43%. The head is now worried that some youngsters may have been put in the wrong sets at high school.

She said: "I didn't send the original results out to parents or the high schools because I knew they were wrong, but even so they were sent out to the schools by the Department for Schools and Families via the education authority.

"I had a couple of phone calls from parents and once we got the results through I contacted the schools. I don't know how many other children were affected by this."

However, Mrs Burdin said she was upset as the new scores were, broadly speaking, what she had originally expected to see.

She said: "When the scores came back, all but one of the amended levels agreed with the teacher assessments which proves we know what we are doing and were able to assess our children.

"The one exception had been assessed a level below by the teacher because that is where the child normally worked."

Some schools are still waiting for re-marks to be returned and secondary schools generally do not put new starters in sets until after half-term, when they have taken Cognitive Assessment Tests.

However, teacher assessment has had to be used for GCSE groupings in senior schools.

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