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

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education in England had no chance to flourish. He had barely arrived at the QCA
office in Piccadilly before the crisis burst upon him.

2 The September 2002 fiasco: Awarding bodies in the dock

Following the first set of results for the restructured A2 qualification, the reliability of
some of the grades awarded was questioned at a national level in September 2002.
Press coverage of what became known as ‘the A-Ievel fiasco’ began with an article in
The Observer of 1 September detailing the inexplicable result for a Hertfordshire
student whose expected A grade was dragged down to a C because an examining
board had awarded U grades to the two final modules. The perceived injustice of such
an outcome hinged on the fact that the student then failed to meet the grade
requirement for her university place. Over the next fortnight, an ever-growing number
of similar cases emerged, until 13^th September, when the TES published a front page
article headlined: Teachers’ outrage at exam board A level fix. The charge by a
considerable number of head teachers was that the awarding bodies had altered some
students’ module results to ensure that the new A2 grades were not inflated in relation
to preceding A-Ievel results. Such was the resulting media furore that the QCA’s
bound collection of one month’s press cuttings on the issue weighed 2.4 kilos (QCA
2002b).

As discussed above, decisions taken despite the Boards’ protests had virtually ensured
higher grades for the A2. Therefore the crisis is considered as conclusive evidence of
the Boards’ role having become that of virtual pawns in the system. They were caught
between head-teachers’ irate accusations of unfair meddling with marks and Sir
William Stubbs’ insistence that he had done nothing more than make clear to the

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