The English Examining Boards: Their route from independence to government outsourcing agencies

episodes indicate that when a scapegoat is required for problems in the system, the
Boards are very central indeed in the nation’s consciousness. This could be interpreted
as evidence that they are taken for granted until they make a mistake. Yet the nation’s
evident reliance on their performance makes their absence from serious analysis
puzzling.

As well as being taken for granted, the Boards may have suffered from the low level
of awareness of the exceptional nature of the English structure. In other countries,
examinations are either an integral function of the state apparatus as in China and
France - as well as Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland - or an aspect of teachers’
professional repertoire as in Germany. The provision of national qualifications by
independent and competing organisations has no duplicate internationally. The former
chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) has
acknowledged this, and said, ‘7 have regularly described our system as unique"
(QCAl, 2000). It is perhaps this unique nature of the English system that may have
contributed to its neglect.

These findings firstly support my case for the value of a study of the English
examining boards as providers of the examinations which wield undoubted influence.
Secondly they have affected the methodology of the thesis. In place of an orthodox
literature review, my first chapter is more a survey of a literature which reveals my
subject to be at best a peripheral presence.

In the second chapter I establish the theoretical framework within which my research
is located and the resulting methodological approach I have adopted.

With the study thus grounded, I provide evidence for my case in three central
chapters. Chapter three uses historical data to narrate the development of the boards

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