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

197

awarding bodies, one might assume that the policy anticipated that the three
vocational bodies would remain within the structure. However, one of those bodies
had a different agenda, in the opinion of an interviewee from another board. ⁱⁱJVhat
was interesting was always the way City & Guilds kept themselves apart " (OCR2
2003).

City & Guilds, at that time led by a wily Director General - and ⁱⁱthe cast of
characters is very important” (OCR2 2003) - held early discussions about
cooperating with AEB. After all, the AEB had been an offspring of City & Guilds.
However these talks came to an abrupt halt when it became clear that the City &
Guilds’ objective was a straightforward takeover of the academic board. (Sturgis
2000: 40) Instead the discussions widened to become three-way negotiations
including NEAB - with whom, it transpired, City & Guilds had also been exploring
options. The resulting creation of AQA as a Joint Venture entered into by AEB,
NEAB and City & Guilds was announced with much fanfare by the New Labour
Junior Education Minister, Lady Blackstone, on 6 November 1997. Negotiations
continued over the detail of the new structure, with the City & Guilds representatives
becoming increasingly impatient with the slow pace of progress; they appeared to be
advocating a full merger as soon as possible. Then in February 1998, they electrified
the other two members of the Joint Venture: they offered to sell City & Guilds’ GCSE
provision to AQA for £5 millions. This unusual method of leaving a legally created
Joint Venture had the immediate effect of forcing AEB and NEAB to negotiate a
more realistic price for the GNVQ provision they both needed to remain accredited
awarding bodies. The two Boards eventually merged fully on 1 April 2000.

<<   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   >>

More intriguing information