BESSEMER, Ala. — A dozen students in Alabama expecting to start high school last week are heading back to the eighth grade because the school system can’t seem to find their grades.

Superintendent Keith A. Stewart said in a letter that the students were initially promoted to the ninth grade at Bessemer City High School. But the students were sent back to middle school.

WBRC-TV reports they had been enrolled in a program at Bessemer City Middle School, which was designed to help students who failed a grade catch up and graduate. In the program, students took seventh-grade classes part of the year and eighth-grade classes the rest of the year. But Stewart says there was no record of those students passing the eighth-grade classes.

Stewart says he had no choice but to hold them back because the school couldn’t produce the needed grades for them.