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

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The policy document which set the tone for post-16 education in the 1990s was the
1991 White Paper Education and Training for the 21st Century. The Government’s
objectives were to improve standards and, using the language of the market, make
colleges more responsive to their potential ‘client base’. This document had a major
impact on the whole of post-16 education as it, in the words of one analysis:

...formalized a triple-track national qualifications framework based on an
academic track (А-levels), a broad vocational track (GNVQs) and an
occupationally specific track (NVQs) [and moved] towards an education and
training market and the end to local planning of post-16 education with the
incorporation of FE colleges.

(Hodgson and Spours 1997: 9)

In also endorsing the removal of polytechnics from local authority control and
upgrading them all to university status, the White Paper changed the face of higher
education. This upgrading of the polytechnics did not, as might have been expected,
noticeably reduce the pressure for university places but instead gradually intensified
the demand for differentiated examination grades to assist the selection process. This
became another of the pressures on the examining boards.

For the examining boards the effect of this White Paper and the legislation which it
signalled was more indirect than the earlier introduction of GCSE or the Dearing
Report which followed. However, it altered the terrain of post-16 education by
formalising the education market, with the consequent competition, mergers, and
accountability for products that a market entails. This fundamental philosophical
change prepared the ground for subsequent policies which were to affect the Boards
directly. Before considering these, it is important to consider what had been
happening within one area that had remained outside the focus of government
attention until the 1990s turned the spotlight on them: vocational qualifications.

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