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

135

A nation’s attitudes do not change easily. Yet despite this truism, this chapter has shown
that the quest to reform the qualifications system is a continuing one. The 1990s saw the
process continue, with the impetus coming from the centre, and having a major impact on
the examining boards.

The next chapter focuses on the themes of increasing central control and continuing
attempts to improve vocational education combining with other pressures common to all
organisations during the 1990s to place the examining boards under severe pressure while
they were implementing the major changes which continued the process of undermining
their professional independence. Before moving to this next phase, it is important to
reflect on what might be termed, depending on one’s choice of metaphor, the forest of
which these trees form a part, the nature of the tectonic plate movements that lie beneath
the story so far or the meta-narrative of which this narrative forms an element.

Looking beneath the narrative: what was really happening?

Returning to my research questions at this point, although they are straightforward and
lack any pretensions to profundity, they have served to unearth a body of data that
enables the deeper analysis that is the real objective of doctoral research.

1 How did the examining boards evolve from their origins accrediting
university matriculation into independent providers of the national
qualifications system?

2 How did the successive changes to the examinations structure affect their
role?

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