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

15

Standards (DfEE 1997a), and Qualifying for Success (DfEE 1997b) have been
invaluable for gaining an insight into the motivation behind the changes that were part
of the qualifications culture of the 1990s. The examining boards feature only in the
Dearing Review and in Guaranteeing Standards, but even here they are treated rather
as a problem requiring a solution - in the latter case, merger - than as acknowledged
pillars of the examinations system.

(b) Education Histories

The student of the history of education can begin to construct an analytical framework
by reading some excellent secondary sources of which Green's Education and State
Formation (Green 1990) is a fine example, from an essentially sociological
standpoint. His placing of English developments within a EuropearfAmerican
comparative model stresses the voluntarist nature of provision in this country. Green
bestows on Margaret Archer the accolade of "the most powerful comparative
framework that has yet been provided" (Green 1990:73) for her Weberian account of
The Social Origins of Educational Systems (Archer 1984). With these works framing
the field overall, one can locate the perspective of the limited number of accounts of
the origins and early growth of the examining system.

Two historians have provided useful accounts of the development of examinations in
England which are an essential resource in understanding how the curious structure of
the English boards came into being. John Roach’s Public Examinations in England
1850-1900 (Roach 1971) is a social history which provides a nicely balanced contrast
to Robert Montgomery’s Examinations and their Use as an Administrative Device in
England (Montgomery 1965). Montgomery’s account is firmly based in a Cambridge
viewpoint, and gives the flavour of the endless debates over trivial issues such as the

<<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   >>

More intriguing information