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

130

Department of Education and Science established the Technical Education Council
(TEC) and the Business Education Council (BEC) to oversee the related courses
offered by further education colleges. The two councils merged in 1983 - taking with
them a large slice of their mentor’s clientele and staff (CGLI 1993: 42) - to form an
awarding body known as BTEC, whose subsequent history will form part of the next
chapter. This organisation created a structure of practical courses with a general
education component and a clear progression pathway: from First Certificate to
Diploma to link with the established Higher National Diploma.

These courses became a major success within further education colleges, and
provided a sorely-needed alternative route through practical education. However the
further education sector has never wielded sufficient political influence to mount a
defence of its successes, and this positive development was to be overtaken by
untested experiments growing out of another national employment crisis and the
lacuna in the post-16 curriculum referred to above.

When during the 1970s youth unemployment had increased staying-on rates and
consequent pressure for change in the sixth-form curriculum, the Department of
Education and Science established the Further Education Unit (FEU) to consider the
problem. The resulting document introduced new thinking about the nature of
learning. A Basis for Choice (1979) identified what the FEU termed ‘experiential
learning’ as different from the abstractions of the academic approach but an equally
valid route for young people to follow. Their approach won out over the Schools
Council’s proposed CEE and was endorsed by the English and Welsh Education
Ministers, Mark Carlisle and Nicholas Edwards in their 1980 consultation paper on

Examinations 16-18.

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