Miliband appointed as troubleshooter to raise public confidence in exams body

The Government's rising star David Miliband has been given the troubleshooting role in sorting out the blunders that have bedevilled this year's GCSE, AS and A-level exams.

Mr Miliband, the 36-year-old former head of Tony Blair's policy unit who became minister for Schools last month after just a year as an MP, is to be put in charge of monitoring the performance of the government exams watchdog.

The junior minister will also be given new powers to intervene to make sure the body complies with a government order to "raise its game" to tackle exam blunders.

The appointment is being seen as an opportunity for him to "make his name" in a crucial policy area where ministers are worried that constant complaints about mistakes will dent public confidence in the exam system.

The move was announced yesterday by Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education, as she published a five-year review carried out by civil servants of the performance of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the exams advisory body. It criticised the QCA for being too slow to react to complaints and having poor communications with its clients – schools, teachers, parents and examination boards.

Ms Morris acknowledged that the organisation, set up in 1997, had many strengths but argued that it needed to be more "robust" to meet the demands of the 21st century. It will be given new powers to intervene directly in the affairs of exam boards to correct errors from September.

"Quite honestly, the world has moved on since 1997 and the QCA has to move with it," she said. "It has done well in the past but that is not enough for the future.

"As a government we have got to be as tough on our performance and the performance of our partners in the education services as we are on schools. Like any other body in the public service, last year's good enough results is not good enough for next year."

Ms Morris said that there were 24 million exam scripts to be marked this year, adding: "Inevitably the odd mistake might be made but even a 99.9 per cent success rate means 24,000 errors – and that would be 24,000 teachers and parents and schools with a complaint that something went wrong, so we can't even be happy with that."

The review said the QCA should spend more time monitoring the performance of exam boards and "step back" from its role of setting national curriculum tests.

A further review will determine whether it should still have the role of drawing up national curriculum tests for 11- and 14-year-olds.

Its new chief executive, Ken Boston, who takes over in September, has been given the task of deciding whether it should be "divesting its direct responsibilities for the assembly of national test papers, their issue and collection, and arranging external marking".

The review said of the exam watchdog's dual role that the QCA "might become insufficiently distanced to 'see the wood from the trees' ", adding: "It will become harder for them to criticise the final product."

The QCA welcomed the review yesterday, stressing that it had concluded that the organisation had "done a good job and is the right organisation to deliver its future agenda".