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

182

across the whole fielcΓ (Dearing 1996: 29). Of the 35 paragraphs in that section of his
report, only five were concerned specifically with “The awarding bodies in England,
Wales and Northern Ireland’’. However the points he made in relation to the English
providers of GCSE, A levels and the GNVQ lacked any ambiguity:

The objective should be to reduce the total number of bodies making awards.

Except through joint awarding arrangements, no GCSE or A level awarding
body should be authorised to award the GNVQ, and none of the three bodies
awarding the GNVQ should be authorised to offer A level awards, or to extend
the present provision of GCSEs, except in partnership with a body already
authorised to make those awards.

(Dearing 1996: 30)

Before considering the movement among the Boards precipitated by the above
recommendation, it is important to note a significant change in language that was
formalised in the Dearing Report. Although the principles of discourse analysis are
primarily useful for “attempting to bring certain methods to bear on qualitative data
so as to produce rigour in presenting evidence" (Cameron 2003), one can use the
associated skills to reflect on the implications of the introduction of the term ‘unitary
awarding bodies’.

The Dearing Report stressed ‘unitary’ as the important concept: if vocational and
academic awards had the same provenance, it was hoped that they would be deemed
of comparable reliability. The change from ‘examining boards’ to ‘awarding bodies’
has, so far as one can tell, escaped comment. Yet this shift in terminology suggests a
shift in function. No longer are they ‘boards’ with overtones of an elite selecting or
rejecting applicants; they become the more neutral ‘bodies’. Even more telling is
replacing ‘examining’ - a process involving passing or failing - with ‘awarding’. No
negative outcome stems from an award. This linguistic means of changing the role of
these organisations sent a subtle message about their changed status. Yet it was

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