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Wolfhas provided an entertaining account of the brief history of the NVQ in her book
Does Education Matter? (Wolf 2002b) However, its relevance here is that the NVQ
provided the model for the first government-initiated addition to post-16 school-based
qualifications since 1944. The General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) in
turn was to precipitate significant structural changes within the examining boards.
This new qualification, based like NVQs on a competence-based assessment structure,
was ‘general’ rather than occupationally specific and retained a core of general
education in the form of core skills. By a parallel process to that which had produced
GCSEs, the three vocational awarding bodies - City & Guilds, BTEC and RSA -
drew up the detailed specifications with NCVQ vetting their proposals. According to
an official from one of those awarding bodies, the task was complicated by the
frequent changes NCVQ introduced despite the lack of government funding for the
rising development costs:
...it was a nightmare. We had nothing to subsidise it with apart from our
reserves. And to have people sitting in conference rooms and focus groups
talking about what ,s the appropriate ideal thing to have in terms of assessment,
and up go the costs. And ‘we want rigour ’ and up go the costs.
(City & Guilds 2000)
After its launch in 1993, the GNVQ proved attractive to young people in 6th forms and
colleges. However it was not long before criticisms began to focus on the undoubtedly
unwieldy assessment system, described as “the most complicated...in the history of
vocational qualifications'’’ (Spours and Young 1997b: 61). The most trenchant of the
critics was Alan Smithers, who chose the unusual but effective medium of television
to launch his attack. (Smithers 1993)
This dissatisfaction with GNVQs together with the ongoing concern about A levels
led the government to commission Ron Dearing to review the whole matter of post-16