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

105

when increasing the powers of the “managerial state" has been at the basis of policy
for both major parties.

While the 1960s and 70s saw teacher unions and local authorities in the ascendant,
with freedom for teachers to experiment, it was certainly not a shining example in
opening opportunities to a wider range of young people. Although a series of
qualification reforms was proposed, only the Certificate of Secondary Education
(CSE), the first of them, came to fruition - and that one merely accredited attainment.
It never achieved the recognition needed to open progression routes. Educationists
who look back to the ‘golden age’ overlook the fact that for the majority OfEnglish
young people it was a time when they were written off by a qualifications system
designed for the top 20%.

For the examining boards, it may seem in retrospect to have been a sort of golden age
because they were largely left to proceed with business as usual. An opposing view
could see it as a period of stagnation, when they ticked over without producing any
creative solutions to the problem of opening access to a significantly wider range of
young people. This may not have been entirely because of their complacency. In the
series of reforms that were designed to address the post-16 qualification problem, the
Boards were never involved in the process. Their status as an essential element within
the “education state" which was not valued for professional expertise continued as
before despite the democratic nature of this golden age.

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