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move toward increased accountability, the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted)
was established. Its inspection reports on schools were to be published both locally
and nationally, and together with the publication of ‘league tables’ of schools’
examination results to spotlight schools’ relative performance. Because of the vital
role of all this data in parental decisions over choice of schools, examination results
now were clearly linked with schools’ future survival. This new power of
examinations was translated into ever-increasing appeals over unsatisfactory results.
For the Boards this meant a major acceleration in the processing of appeals - an area
that had never before been more than a minor activity.
In 1996 Sir Ron Dearing, knighted for his achievement in reviewing the National
Curriculum and its assessment scheme for 5-16 year olds, was asked to turn his
attention to the post-16 age-group in his Review of Qualifications for 16-19 Year Olds
(the Dearing Report). A critical assessment describes Dearing’s reports in general as
“...masterpieces of compromise, placating warring players rather than offering
visionary solutions...” and his 16-19 Review as "couched almost entirely in terms of
employment needs - universities get an occasional mention, but beyond that, the
whole section is conceived in terms of workplace requirements'" (Wolf 1998: 222).
Despite this focus, his report was to generate significant changes to qualifications, to
the regulators and to the examining boards. It designed the route which led to the
Guaranteeing Standards consultation in 1997, recommending changes to the
awarding bodies’ structure, and to Qualifying for Success following the Labour
victory in 1997 which led to the redesign of A levels through Curriculum 2000. All of
these will be considered in more detail later in the chapter, but the cumulative effect
of these policy documents on the examining boards was profound. They were the
means of “an unprecedented centralization of education policy and administration in