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

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sorely needed, the balance of power had altered to leave them in the position not of
the regulator’s active partners but rather of passive clients. The result was a flawed
assessment structure for the revised A levels which led to the grades crisis of
September 2002. The debate surrounding the awarding of the first grades of
Curriculum 2000 will be presented as clear evidence that the Boards were no longer
in control of their central function.

Looking beneath the 1990s agenda: What was really happening

Again, before moving to consider the crisis which I suggest grew inexorably out of
the instability of the Boards brought about by the pressures of the 1990s, it is
important to return to my research questions and to reflect on the underlying
significance of the analysis I have presented.

This chapter has, I believe, has gone much of the way to answering the second and
third questions:

2 How did the successive changes to the examinations structure affect
their role?

3 What evidence is there of a shift in control from the Boards to the
State?

I believe I have demonstrated that the change to a single 16+ examination began the
process of reducing their professional independence over the technical aspects of that
qualification which continued and increased with the advent of GNVQ. I have
presented a volume of evidence that control was moving from the Boards to the state

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