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

Chapter 1 Location of the Thesis in Relation to the
Literature

Identifying an Absence: A survey of the literature reveals the Boards
as peripheral

As I embarked on my research, I began with a search which revealed my subject to
have remained virtually absent across the spectrum of education literature. In
following up the usual paths of references cited in bibliographies, sifting through
journals, interrogating electronic databases and discussing with other researchers, I
succeeded in opening up the terrain but found my particular interest had been
overlooked. While the process has fulfilled its purpose in training me in research
skills, the results have been less than fruitful in shedding the light of other research on
the examining boards. Therefore this section covers the range of literature I have
consulted in acquiring a grasp of my field of inquiry, and serves to underline the need
for the research I have carried out.

I began my search by reading general overviews of the terrain of English education.
For example, when in the year 2000 James Tooley wrote his manifesto for a return to
conservative values in education, he identified four authors as “millennial” thinkers in
the field - although in my view their work tends toward the journalistic (Tooley 2000:
2). These individuals, evidently selected because in the late 1990s they shared
Tooley’s assumption that there was a crisis in education, were:

• Michael Barber with The Learning Game

• Tom Bentley with Learning Beyond the Classroom

Melanie Phillips with All Must Have Prizes

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