A selection of educational stories from around the world.

'Edexcel' fights back

The supposedly "unanswerable" AS-Level maths question which lead to the British exams authority, Edexcel, being engulfed by a wave of derision has been answered correctly by two-thirds of candidates who took the exam last week, the exam board said.

Qualifications director Paul Sokoloff also confirmed that coursework of 20 performing arts students from Barnstaple, Devon, which the examiner was alleged to have lost, had also turned up.

A government troubleshooter was sent in after prime minister Tony Blair and education secretary Estelle Morris decided to crack down on the board for a series of blunders.

Edexcel's chief executive John Kerr apologised to candidates for a series of "silly mistakes", which included supplying faulty diagrams in the maths AS-Level paper taken by about 2,500 students.

The next day, however, Sokoloff said: "We have marked virtually all of those papers now and two-thirds of the students have got the correct answer. What we are now doing is looking at the remaining students who were confused by the error on the question paper."

Kenyan boys on trial

The trial of two boys charged with the deaths of 67 of their classmates in a dormitory blaze began last week in Kenya.

Felix Mambo Ngumbao, 16, and Davies Otieno Onyango, 17, face life in prison if convicted of arson.

About 150 students were sleeping in a cramped, poorly maintained dormitory when the fire broke out in March last year at Kyanguli boarding school in Machakos, 30 miles southeast of Nairobi.

Prosecutors said the teenagers had a range of grievances against the school authorities, including the annulment of l exam results over cheating accusations, disputes over the mishandling of school funds and poor food and accommodation.