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

24

A rare focus on the role of the examining boards is that of Geoff Whitty in his 1985
post-Bemstein∕Young work on the sociology of education. Devoting a full chapter to
‘The politics of public examinations’, he castigates the Boards as undermining the
experimental Mode 3 syllabuses teachers were devising (Whitty 1985). While in my
view his analysis does not acknowledge the Boards’ responsibility for assuring the
reliability of the qualifications they accredited, it is a welcome recognition of their
influence. However, more recent sociology has not followed his example. Even
Whitty’s own later writing moved into more general policy analysis (Whitty 2002)
which, while presenting an important broad critique, does not apply the methods of
sociological analysis to the examinations system and its providers.

I shall cite the work of David Gillbom as representing the mainstream of educational
sociology. He has produced a major body of research into Exclusions from School
1996), Educational inequality (2000), Inclusive schooling (2001) and Education and
institutional racism (2002) which consistently cites examination results as indicators.
For example, in the book Rationing education policy, practice, reform and equity,
written with Deborah Youdell, they coined the phrase “the A-C economy” to describe
how the use of GCSE grades brought about the exclusion from educational
opportunity of many young people because of their social circumstances (Gillbom and
Youdell 2000: 12). Defining themselves as reflexive researchers writing from the
standpoint of critical theory, their analysis uses public examinations as markers of
success and failure within the education system (Gillbom 2000: 4) but does not delve
beneath those data to reflect on the role of the Boards in the process.

Another volume with contributions from a group of education sociologists at the
Institute of Education - Education in deprived areas: outcomes, inputs and processes

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