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Certainly the Schools Council did not impinge on anyone’s autonomy. The central
principle of its constitution once again makes unusual reading from a vantage point
thirty years on, when the “managerial state" has taken on so many of these
responsibilities:
...each school should, have the fullest possible measure of responsibility for its
own work, with its own curriculum and teaching methods based on the needs of
its own pupils and evolved by its own staff.
(Quoted in Plaskow 1985: 4)
As regards its links with the examining boards, the Schools Council fulfilled its
responsibilities over examinations in a minimalist form of regulation. A QCA official
who had been a professional officer with the Schools Council recalls the very light
touch it exercised:
Schools Council regulated, of course. It was done through A-Ievel syllabus
approval and scrutiny, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t done at 16 [О-level]...simply
because the Council didn ,t feel it had the resources to do a job of that size. It
was partly that, I think, and if it had to make a choice it would clearly have
gone for A level because A level was more to do with life chances. Yes, A-Ievel
scrutiny in Schools Council days was a voluntary activity. The boards saw it
presumably as in their interest to have an external view of what they did. It was
never really contentious. Actually, there ,s one thing that isn ,t there [now] that I
didn’t mention earlier and that’s the secrecy issue. That was always a private
business between the Schools Council and the boards, when we sent our reports
to the boards alone: nothing public about them. And it was all done in a very...
what’s the поп-sexist term? Oh, ‘civilised’, I suppose - I was going to say
‘gentlemanly ’ - civilised way in that we sent these reports with
recommendations and the boards were sort of trusted to get on with it, weren ,t
they? There was no really hard-edged follow-up.
(QCA2 2003)
This long excerpt has been quoted in full to provide a rare insight into the spirit of
regulation in the days of the Schools Council. This will be contrasted with subsequent
shifts to strong central control. There is no question that the regulatory agency in
today’s “managerial state" would now tolerate regulation based on ‘suggestions’ and
‘trust’; the regulatory powers now have fully statutory status.