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I suspect that one of the key areas of difficulty there has been computer systems,
you know more than people, where you ’re trying to bring together incompatible
things and somebody else is offering to make it all whiz-bang. I mean, I think
several of the bigger and more spectacular problems have been computer
generated - for Scotland as well, where there were similar very tense mergers
between vocational and academic.
(QCA3 2004)
The third internal pressure was a function of all the others: the cumulative effect of
externally-induced changes and internal personnel and technological pressures was an
inexorable rise in costs. The financial pressures on the three awarding bodies differed
in their severity and in how they were handled, but were certainly felt by all three. In
any market, the ‘bottom line’ is a vital indicator; for the Boards their eventual
acceptance of government subsidy was confirmation of their loss of independence.Of
the three factors, for AQA it was the personnel issue that was first to make itself felt.
1 Staff Problems Resulting from Change
The principal personnel issue was the destabilising effect of major change within two
long-established organisations as AEB and NEAB embarked on their Joint Venture,
the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance in Autumn 1998. Although the actual
change took place at the end of the 1990s, uncertainty about the future had been
hanging over staff since the publication of the Dearing Report in 1996 with its
recommendation that awarding bodies should seek “mergers, associations and
partnerships across the binary line ’’(Dearing 1996: 29). Once again, I recognise that
such uncertainty was not a problem for the examining boards alone; it was a feature
for many organisations facing mergers and takeovers during the 1990s. However in
this instance I submit that the change was imposed rather than chosen by the
organisations concerned. Then the negative effects of change had a direct impact on