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(i)...the fact that those with the greatest vested interest - the boards themselves
- have been given the task of doing all the drafting makes it unlikely that the
new system will adequately meet today ,s curricular needs....
(U) The DES have taken upon themselves a much more overt role in steering
examination reforms and giving themselves rights (unprecedented since 1945)
over the approval of the detailed content of examination syllabuses and schemes
of examination.
(Nuttall 1984: 174)
While the Boards did indeed have a vested interest in the new examination -
examinations at 16+ comprised the major element of their business - from their
standpoint it was Nuttall’s second point that was more cogent. The ‘Groups’ formed
by the Boards may have been given the task of doing all the drafting, but the drafts
were very closely scrutinised and regularly rejected by officials from the Secondary
Examinations Council. Previously such judgements over syllabus or examination
detail had been the preserve of the Boards; now the power of veto rested with a new
agency. The balance of power had altered. This was certainly the perception of a
leader of one examining board at the time:
What really in my judgement changed the whole thing was GCSE. That gave
government an opportunity to play more than a role of the light touch over the
system as a w∕ιo∕e...[with] national criteria...acceptable to the government
being a pre-requisite of the system. And that brought government much more up
front into the examination system than it had ever been before. And everything
that’s happened since has built on that. It’s eroded more and more the
independence of the boards.
(AQAl 2000)
This was control of a quite different order. The Boards’ established expertise was
subject to the judgement of others for the first time in their history. More worrying
than the inroads into their independence were questions as to the competence in the
complexities of assessment of those taking on the responsibility for accepting or
rejecting the new syllabuses. However, the process of increasing central control had
only just begun. As the next decade proceeded, governments of both political colours
saw increasing their control over public services as a necessary corollary of their
responsibility for what became known as the ‘delivery’ of those services. Although,
strictly speaking, the independent examining boards were not public services, this
distinction did not restrict government interest in their activities. The 1990s saw them