HUNDREDS of students at college sites in Kent were today at the centre of the latest Edexcel exam board fiasco which has swept the nation.

Less than 24 hours before the candidates at Mid-Kent College were due to sit an important key-skills test, the board rang to say the papers had two pages missing.

The papers excluded from the communications level two 22-page booklet were faxed overnight and staff at college campuses Horsted, Chatham, City Way, Rochester, and Oakwood Park, Maidstone, got in early this morning to make hundreds of photocopies so the examination could start on time at 9am.

The blunder comes after Edexcel's maths AS-level papers had a mistake in it but decided not to tell 300 test centres across the UK- despite the error being first noticed at a school at Hong Kong eight hours before it was sat in Britain.

It was also reported today that Edexcel has also lost the coursework portfolios of 20 performing arts students at North Devon College, Barnstaple, Devon.

The portfolios, which contain a year's worth of work for the AS course, were received by the exam board and marked, but then lost. While senior staff at Mid-Kent stressed that the mistake did not disrupt the students, they felt it was disappointing that the board left it until the 11th hour to alert them.

College departmental manager Teresa Murray said :"We got this call last night which meant they let these papers go to the printers and out again. She added that the college, which had used Edexcel in key skills for the last 18 months, would now be reviewing whether to renew the contract.

Ms Murray, a Medway councillor, said: "This comes at the end of a catlogue of erroneous errors. We have in the past been flexible with Edexcel, but we have given them two years they still can't get it right. I am afraid it does compromise the security arrangements. It does mean that they were printed and sent out without anyone checking."

Cllr Murray said last summer 600 mathematics students got the wrong results, with those who passed told they had failed and vice versa. The company has also in the past failed to register entries from the college.

Marketing manager Roy Robertson said all three sittings of the exam went on as normal with most of the students unaware of the error.