Primary and secondary schools across the town have become the victims of this year's "chaos" as exam results have not only been delayed, but are subject to inquiries about discrepancies in marking.

Hugh Bellamy, headteacher at George Pindar Community Sports College says many papers have been returned to the school totally unmarked and the entire process had been farcical.

He said: "We had our difficulties with the company which used to mark the papers – but at least they marked them and we could challenge what they had done.

"Some of these papers clearly hadn't been marked. I would normally expect papers to come back with at least some red ink on them but these had nothing.

"I feel that our children and teachers have been treated with absolute contempt. We had script after script after script returned to us without being marked at all and serious questions now need to be asked."

Sats tests are taken by primary school children aged 11 and secondary school children aged 14. They are used to test a student's ability in English, maths and science and to help determine what GCSE classes students go in to. Their results are also used to rank schools' performance.

Primary school children sat their exams in the week between May 12 and May 16. The secondary pupils sat theirs in the following week.

The problems with the marking of this year's papers have arisen in the first year that private contractor ETS Europe has marked the papers after it took over the contract in a £156 million five-year deal.

St Augustine's and Scalby School have also had problems and as they closed their doors for the year many of their students were left still without results.

Roger Cannon, St Augustine's headteacher, said: "I am really disappointed that in 2008 we are unable nationally to organise an assessment system that delivers results in reasonable time.

"At the moment the system belittles the hard work that staff and students have put in.

"As a headteacher I am very disappointed that we cannot give our students the credit they deserve."

Carey Chadwick, interim headteacher at Scalby School, disagrees with the Sats system. She said: "I think it is absolutely disgraceful and another example of a system run by adults letting younger people down.

"Nobody goes to a job interview and is asked what their Sats results are. They are a waste of everyone's time."

Scalby School students are still without their English results and staff at the school are sending all the science papers back for remarking.

A spokesman from the National Assessment Agency, which oversees the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, said: "We are sorry to advise there has been a delay in schools being able to access their key stage test results online.

"The main causes of this delay are the lateness in the completion of the marking process and a series of technical issues.