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Structural weaknesses: building in grade inflation
There were myriad minor disputes which reinforced the powerless status of the
Boards. One Board official detected the influence of a strong hand during the process
of approving the new syllabuses - henceforth to be known as specifications'':
We had countless very small but accumulated [changes]. They aggregated to
become something big. Small influences: for example, the approval of
syllabuses. The detail and the changes forced on us which in truth have made
assessment difficult. And in some cases Stupidl They were telling the experts,
‘This is what you ,ve got to do. ’ That ,s not regulation; that ,s government
stipulation. Well, and then I’m not even sure that...it’s Government. I can’t
believe the politicians...are the ones doing it. It’s a group of people who are
acting under some sort of aegis that they believe that they got for themselves
that other people find difficult to challenge. Now challenge you could do, until it
[regulation] became statutory. But once you ,ve made them statutory, challenges
become very difficult, because there ,s no appeal mechanism.
(0CR2 2003)
There were apparently minor issues the Boards tried in vain to raise as needing more
reflection:
Things like re-sit rules, things like requirements for synoptic assessment, et
cetera were all a bit poorly thought through. And also the ‘one size fits all’
model, in other words all subjects go into six modules, was a backward step;
some of the more successful modular syllabuses had been four rather than six.
(Edexcel2 20003)
This is clear evidence that in matters involving assessment expertise the Boards were
no longer able to win arguments. Control had passed out of their hands and had now
effectively moved to government agencies, if not to Government itself
From at least one viewpoint on the regulatory side, it appeared that a parallel process
was inhibiting regulatory decisions: in this case, it seemed that policy ruled regardless
of findings based on evidence. Even here it seemed that important decisions were
being made elsewhere:
It doesn 't matter what you ,ve found; if it ,s not comfortable with the policy, it
doesn’t matter. So there were elements of that. I suppose it’s always that
interesting thing in those policy-geared places like QCA that there is the buzz of
policy - but there ,s also the total frustration it dictates. It doesn't matter what
you’ve found, if it’s not comfortable with the policy it doesn’t matter. And that
whole fascinating thing about how decisions are made - and rarely are they