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

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evidence will necessarily be derived from press coverage in the absence of other
sources considering such recent events. The lens through which the events will be
considered will be the perspective of the Boards. My contention is that with the
advent of Curriculum 2000 effective control had moved inexorably from a putative
partnership to reside fully in QCA hands - hands which may be considered a proxy
for government control.

A basic difficulty with this approach comes from attempting to establish a clear binary
position for the locus of power as between the three awarding bodies on the one hand
and QCA, the DfEE∕DfES and the Government on the other. On one side, the
examining boards are difficult to treat as a single entity because they are becoming
more divergent than they have ever been - partly I will claim, in response to their
diminishing control over their core business.

On the other side, the lack of clarity in the relationship between QCA and the
DfEE∕DfES compounds the questions which have always existed about the division of
responsibility between a minister and his/her advisers. This issue was raised directly
in the wake of the events of September 2002, when a Liberal Democrat MP
questioned QCA’s independence from government ''following revelations that its
deputy chief executive [Beverley Evans] is a civil servant from the education
department.” Phil Willis’s letter asked the Minister, ⁱⁱHow can the government have
no role in the QCA ^,s operations when a serving civil servant from your department
occupies so senior a position thereT' (EducationGuardian.co.uk 10 October 2002)
Even the new ChiefExecutive of QCA admitted shortly after taking up his post that:

In the education sector, the QCA does not have the conspicuous independence
that is the foundation of the credibility and authority of Ofsted, which is
accountable not to the Department for Education and Skills, but to Parliament.
Nor does it have the authority of bodies that regulate competitive markets in

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