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

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for Advanced GNVQs) despite an overriding objective of the whole reform being to
bridge the academic-vocational divide. This refusal by QCA and the Minister to
accept sound professional advice from the awarding bodies confirms that their proven
competence in technical assessment matters no longer carried any weight. They had
become clients rather than equal partners.

There were additional inflationary features of the new structure whose effect no one
seemed to have anticipated: the opportunity for students to re-sit modules in order to
improve their results and to discard the weakest of their AS levels and carry on with
their three strongest subjects. Because students would receive the results of their three
AS modules serially, they could decide to re-sit modules where their results were
unsatisfactory. Then, when embarking on their A2 year, it would clearly be in their
interest to continue only with those subjects which would earn them the highest total
points for university entrance applications. These factors would, like the equal
weighting decision, have meant an inevitable upward drift in results. Perhaps only
those working in schools who understood the instrumental approach students take
towards subject choice in order to maximize their chances could have foreseen this
behaviour, and as Hodgson and Spours had found, those educationists were left
completely outside the discussions of Curriculum 2000 (Hodgson 2003: 160).

A final factor that was overlooked was the motivation teachers now had to ensure that
their students achieved the best possible outcomes. Once the annual publication of
Teague tables’ of examination results had begun, those results had become of vital
importance not just to the candidates but to the future of the institution they had
attended. Assessment research has uncovered consistent evidence to endorse the

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