180
was confirmed in a subsequent interview by one who was directly involved in the
merger:
...The merger, when NCVQ joinedSCAA to become QCA, ...was seen in terms
offairly hostile power struggles, and who’s winning out.... And I think it was
quite clear that in that sense the power had gone to the SCAA traditional exams
section. And, again, those who moved over I think felt very much [that] they
were second class, just like vocational qualifications - in pay scales and this,
that and the other ....But all that was indicative of this feeling that nobody really
cared about occupational and vocational qualifications. That wasn ,t where the
action was. It was to do with national curriculum stuff and conventional,
general examinations. So an interesting struggle there...with quite a few NVQ
[staff] moving off retiring and that kind of thing.
(QCA2 2004)
Ecclestone, in her interviews regarding the policy debates around GNVQ assessment,
found a similarly dominant academic bias, not only within the regulator but more
widely:
An academic tradition, deriving from ‘cultural restorationist ’ ideas about norm-
referenced ‘standards’ rooted in subject knowledge, was represented by civil
servants in the ex-DES and DfE, ministers, ex-SCAA officials and OFSTED
inspectors. These constituencies were much more influential inside policy than
the ‘vocational modernisers’ and ‘liberal humanists’ represented by civil
servants in the ex-ED, officials in NCVQ, FEU and the awarding bodies, and
the FEFC inspectorate.
(Ecclestone 2002: 173)
Evidence of the balance of power was provided by subsequent changes to GNVQs.
QCA required adaptations to the assessment system to reflect more traditional
approaches. “...external assessment, now termed ‘independent’ assessment, would be
seen as a prime instrument of accountability” (Spours 1998: 12). It seemed that the
very innovations that NCVQ had inspired to shape a new qualification suited to
different learning styles in the post-16 population had lost out as a result of the
powerful reliance on the A-Ievel model as the ‘gold standard’. Many teachers felt that
rather than bridging the academic∕vocational divide, the effect was that GNVQs were
being moved across that divide to replicate the academic model of assessment.
(BusinessStudies 2002) Others concerned over the weaknesses in GNVQ assessment