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• virtually all state schools north of Watford used the Joint Matriculation Board;
• Further Education colleges used the Associated Examining Board.
This pattern was unaffected by the introduction of the CSE because that qualification
was administered through regional bodies. Schools were not free to select any CSE
provider, but were restricted to that of their geographical area because of the high
degree of teacher involvement in the qualification. There was, therefore, little
significant movement from one board to another until the inception of GCSE in 1986
occasioned considerable upheaval. Then “t/ie inertia which had tended to keep
institutions with the same exam board over the years was suddenly replaced by the
need for a clear-eyed look at what each board offered” (Sturgis 2000: 33). The new
single examination at 16+ was an unknown quantity and required each department in
each school in the country to consider all the new syllabuses and decide which would
be most appropriate for their students.
When this form of ‘product differentiation’ was applied to choice of examining board,
the historical balance of their respective market shares altered as the ties of some old
loyalties weakened. Although strong northern solidarity meant that the traditional
links of schools in the north generally transferred to the Northern Examining
Authority (NEA), in the rest of the country few certainties remained. The Midland
Examining Group (MEG), with access to the deep pockets of Cambridge for the
necessary resources, stole a march on the other Groups by rapidly getting its
syllabuses into schools and running training courses in the new style of examination.
This pro-active approach proved effective in winning a larger share of candidates, as
an official with that board recalled:
MEG had always punched above where it was meant to be in terms of its weight
and its entry. And I remember quite a few conversations with my friends in the