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

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medieval in its complexity. It is unsurprising that none of this was understood in the
wider world. It is also unsurprising that forging a single body from these four separate
entities:

...was a much more contentious internal issue. These two universities,
Cambridge and Oxford, as you will almost certainly know are very proud. And
they’re not really single entities. No, they’re groups. And they were very proud
of their patches. So there were a considerable number of people in various
places in Oxford in particular who didn ^,t actually want to do this. But
nonetheless the universities did do it. So then we had, in 1996, the first exams -
the deal was signed in 1995 - all the A level coming into the University of
Cambridge Examinations Syndicate. That was a culture shift, that was. We
therefore had, as we have now, the Southern Universities Exam Board, the two
ends of the Oxford & Cambridge Exam Board, the Oxford Delegacy, the West
Midlands and East Midlands ...and Cambridge itself six if not seven pieces
wrapped into one.

(OCR2 2003)

When asked about how the A-Ievel board Oxford & Cambridge Examinations and
Assessment (OCEAC), which had appeared in the mid-1990s, fitted into the overall
structure, the interviewee’s the explanation was brisk:

Well, OCEAC - I missed OCEAC, yes. Well the OCEAC was a little sort of
diversion in a sense because we had to do something with the Oxford end of
Oxford & Cambridge, Cambridge end of Oxford & Cambridge and Cambridge
at the time, so we created OCEAC but of course OCR came along very soon
afterwards so OCEAC only survived for about three years, if that. [It was a very
short-term thing...] Very short term thing, yes....

(OCR2 2003)

Despite the outward appearance of a single entity, the established Cambridge method
of moving slowly when absorbing bodies was again followed, with the result that “the
first really common [OCR] A level exam was 2002”. No reference was made in the
interview to any possible effect of this as a factor in the problems of September of that
same year; however it must be bome in mind when considering those events in a later
section.

Certainly, with all of these internal changes grinding along, the decision to form OCR
by buying out the GNVQ provision of the RSA’s Examinations Section was a

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