Barry Sheerman

Government explanations for last year's A Level chaos have been described as "inadequate" and "perfunctory" by an influential committee of MPs.

Barry Sheerman, chairman of the education and skills select committee, has sent back ministers' answers to his questions and has warned that last year's failings, which contributed to the resignation of Estelle Morris as education secretary, could be repeated.

"We have sent the responses back because they were inadequate," he said.

"If lessons have not been learned we would be very worried. We expect a certain standard of reply for an investigation into events which led to a secretary of state's resignation."

The MPs reported on Friday that officials in the Department for Education and Skills had blamed the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and exam boards for the incident, which led to the re-examination of 100,000 students' work, with grades raised in 1220 cases.

The education and skills committee has sent a letter to education secretary Charles Clarke, asking him to reconsider his department's responses and warning that members are "not confident" lessons have been learned.

However, a spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills argued that lessons had been learned.

"We have a working group on long-term reform, chaired by Mike Tomlinson, which is very aware of previous problems," she said.

"We can give a cast-iron assurance that if we intorduced reform at a later stage, it would be fully developed and fully tested."

An inquiry by Tomlinson found that the new A Level system was introduced too quickly, and that no pilot scheme of the A2 exams had been held.

Earlier this year Ken Boston, the new head of the QCA, warned that a successful year in 2003 would be "by luck" and by "a hair's breadth".