EDUCATION bosses have apologised to the Chinese community after racist slurs were found in a secondary school exam paper.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority has sent out apologies to racial equality campaigners following a stream of complaints for the use of the phrases Chinky and Who Flung Dung in an interpretation passage in this year's Standard Grade English paper.

Large sections of the Chinese community were left deeply offended at the content of the paper, which was sat by children across Scotland.

Signed by SQA awards division director David Elliot, the letters accept that the complaints were ''fully justified''. Representatives of the Chinese community have expressed relief at the apology, but believe it must be followed up with letters to schools around the country to make sure the piece has not had a damaging effect on racial harmony within schools.

Edward Tsang, secretary of the Confederation of Chinese Associations of Scotland, said: ''We are glad that the SQA has responded with an apology to Chinese people from all over Scotland.

''This has been an upsetting issue - we even heard a story about a disabled Chinese boy in Ayr who had to have the piece read out loud to him, he was very upset. I can understand that the story is trying to show racist behaviour in a certain light but the extract was used in entirely the wrong environment in this case. The whole episode has caused a lot of upset but now we are in the process of writing to head teachers across Scotland to make sure there is not a knock-on effect."

The tale is about an encounter between a group of drunk Scots and a young Asian couple at a bus station. The Scots harass the Asian couple saying, ''Fancy a chinky, eh? Deid cat chop suey. Hey - Who Flung Dung!''

The written apology from the authority states: ''SQA is committed to the principles of equal opportunities and as part of this policy we issue a checklist designed to avoid cultural, racial or religious bias in examination tasks.

''While I understand that the setters selected the passage with the aim of stimulating the interest of young people, it was an error of judgement for which SQA must accept responsibility. We apologise unreservedly for the distress caused to candidates. In order to ensure that it does not happen again, we have sought the advice of the Commission for Racial Equality on how our guidance to setters might be improved."

Although the short story on which the interpretation piece was based has an anti-racist message, it was felt by the Chinese Associations of Scotland that in the context of the exam the excerpt came across as misrepresentative of Oriental people in this country.

The short story, titled Barely an Incident and taken from the book Red Tides, was written by Glasgow-born fiction writer and poet Dilys Rose, a former winner of the Macallan short story prize.

She spoke yesterday about her concern at causing any part of the Chinese community, saying: ''The point of the story is actually to show racism up for what it is - stupid. I am really sorry that I have offended anybody in the Chinese community, that was never my intention, I just feel if you're going to deal with an issue like racism you can't do it politely. I dealt with it in a way that I found appropriate, perhaps different cultures would deal with the problem in a different way.''

Tayside Racial Equality Council (TREC) chairman Dudley Kay, said he was pleased to receive the written apology but stressed: ''We would like to have a representative on the education committee so that we can solve any problems before they are allowed to go this far.

''We received a complaint from representatives of the local Chinese community, who were deeply offended at the content of this national exam paper. As we work for all the community, we took immediate action.''