A SECOND local secondary school has reported problems with its SATS results in the wake of last week s angry outburst by a St Albans head teacher. St George s School in Sun Lane, Harpenden, has been suffering similar frustrations to St Albans Girls School

A SECOND local secondary school has reported problems with its SATS results in the wake of last week's angry outburst by a St Albans head teacher.

St George's School in Sun Lane, Harpenden, has been suffering similar frustrations to St Albans Girls School (STAGS) over its SATS results and is still missing the outcome of two maths and two science Key Stage Three papers. As a result, students sitting papers at the same level and their parents cannot be told the results.

To compound the problems a large number of scripts for science level 5-7 are still outstanding although the school has the results - and like STAGS, St George's wants to apply for remarking but cannot without the papers.

Exams officer at St George's Paul Mcgillivray said he had just received remarked papers for English and maths which were submitted before the first deadline in July.

But despite constant calls to the National Assessment Agency (NAA) helpline - which he dubbed the hopeless line - the school was still waiting for its final results.

It had received one box of papers which when opened, turned out to be for a school in Tower Hamlets and on another occasion had received a large croquet-size box which turned out just to have one paper in it.

Mr Mcgillivray said that a few parents had rung in asking what had happened about the results but the students had largely lost interest now they had moved on to their GCSE courses. "They were really keen to get them in July," he added.

He blamed a lot of the problems on the complexity of the papers and described the instructions as "unfathomable" but said that after numerous phone calls, he had yet to receive a sensible response.

He added: "We have however had a glossy pack with details of how to order next year's papers. It would be nice to receive this year's back first though."

Last week Chris Murrell, head of STAGS, complained to Education Secretary Ed Balls about the school's failure to receive its English SATS results.

And while her outcry did lead to the eight missing results arriving and an apology from NAA, the school is still in dispute over one pupil who was marked absent when she was not.

Mrs Murrell said: "We have her paper here and it has been marked so we have another issue with them to resolve."

The firm which dealt with the SATS exam shambles, ETS Europe, was sacked in August.