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

Abstract

The contention of this thesis is that the independent English examining boards have
been gradually transformed from independent organisations administering a national
qualifications system to virtual outsourcing agencies working within a centrally
controlled framework.

The thesis begins with a review of the literature of English education which reveals
that within that literature the examining boards have remained peripheral bodies,
accepted as an element in the secondary assessment structure but never seriously
analysed. Within a theoretical framework based on the central concept of the
encroaching “managerial state”, this absence has informed the methodology, which
locates the university examining boards as the focus in a historical narrative of the
development of the unique English post-16 qualifications providers.

The central section of the thesis concentrates on the examining boards in the 1990s,
and suggests that the pressures of that decade threatened their stability. Data in
support of the analysis of this section was gathered in a series of interviews with
significant actors from the boards and their regulatory agencies. Then a section
dealing with the A-Ievel grades crisis of September 2002 suggests that this event
provides clear evidence of the Boards’ loss of professional independence.

The thesis concludes that the English examining boards can no longer be deemed
independent and ends with some observations on the significance of this change with
two possible directions suggested for their future.

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