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Chapter 5 TheA-Ievel Grades Crisis of September 2002: The
Boards become hostages to fortune
In August 2003, The Guardian's editorial referred to the previous year’s crisis as “the
most damaging event in the [A level] exam’s history". (The Guardian 14 August
2003) I shall consider this dramatic episode in the history of English examining
boards from the perspective of control: where power lay as between on the one hand
the three awarding bodies and on the other the grouping of their regulator, the
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the education department (DfEE,
then DfES) and the Government as represented by ministers. Evidence will be cited to
suggest that by September 2002 the examining boards had lost control over what had
always been their professional preserve: both the A-Ievel subject specifications and
the examinations to assess them. By this stage they were effectively providing an
administrative service without the ability to exercise their professional judgement. In
trying to sustain a particular argument based on such very recent events, I shall be
instructed by Denis Lawton’s observation about his attempt twenty years ago to assess
the growing central control of the curriculum: "Part of the difficulty in trying to write
about continuing developments is that it is rarely possible to tell a complete story with
a happy (or even an unhappy) ending" (Lawton 1984: Preface) In this instance the
‘story’ is certainly not complete, although I will suggest possible alternative directions
it may take.
The chapter is structured with an introduction followed by three sections. The first
will concentrate on the period of the design of Curriculum 2000 prior to its launch in
September 2000. Then a brief section on some initial problems will be followed by an
analysis of the issues that surfaced in the crisis of September 2002. Much of the