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

137

While the weakness of the post-war economy delayed wider social change until the 1960s
saw the demise of deference, in terms of education it was not until the 1970s that the
various pressures that were beginning to threaten the social contract began to make
themselves felt. In the 1970s the coinciding of an oil crisis which weakened the labour
market with the raising of the school leaving age in 1974 meant pressure on schools for a
more flexible curriculum just as the reorganisation of local government that same year
had politicised previously consensual metropolitan and county councils as never before.
Commitment to the democratic Schools Council dwindled just when its creative response
was badly needed. In this vacuum of innovation, the Department of Education and
Science stepped up its ambition to take up the slack left by the weakening of the tri-
partite partnership of Local Education Authorities, teacher unions and Department
officials. This ambition lay behind the ‘Yellow Paper’ which informed James Callaghan’s
1976 ‘Ruskin Speech’ - the public rupture of trust in education. As the decade ended
with the breakdown in trust between unions and the Labour Government in the 1978/9
‘Winter of Discontent’, the nation opted for a change of government that ushered in the
Thatcherite era where trust was replaced by accountability.

When in 1983 Sir Keith Joseph as Secretary of State for Education yielded to the pressure
for a single examination at 16+ but replaced the Schools Council by a centrally appointed
regulator, he was following the path outlined by Onora O’Neill, where “the new
accountability takes the form of detailed control” (O'Neill 2002). The next chapter will
demonstrate how this quest for accountability grew ever more intense, with severe
consequences for the examining boards.

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