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

234

three subjects in year 13. For Board staff this meant a complete change in the rhythm
of their working year. There would no longer be a quiet season in the examining
world.

Following immediately on the ever-increasing appeals in September and October,
Staffhad to begin preparing for three sets of modular examinations in year 12, with a
33% increase in entries because virtually every student was now taking four subjects
as the norm rather than three. This change in itself would have required considerable
adjustment, but the new pattern had to accommodate the continuing administration of
what were termed ‘legacy syllabuses’: the second year of the 1999-2000 A-Ievel cycle
plus retakes and various other leftovers. The effect was that staff were now handling
15 examination series in a year, each of which involved "detailed checking, handling,
aggregating and linking to entries within two IT systems'” (AQA 2003a). For AQA
alone, examination entries increased between 2000 and 2002 by 14.5% This meant
processing 13 788 518 modules in the first year of the new staffing structure. Such
significant increases should have been good news for the newly merged organisation.
Unfortunately the increased administration generated by the move to modular
examinations required a 17.5% increase in processing staff at a cost which had not
been anticipated in the budget (AQA 2003a).

Adapting to the declining supply of markers

Another personnel-related issue also contributed to staff stress (and spiralling costs)
for all three assessment bodies. This was the growing shortage of teachers willing to
take on the task of examination marking. Problems in recruiting markers had been

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