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Acting to defend the government - which Tomlinson’s Interim Report was to absolve
of influencing “the expected ow/cozne.s”(Tomlinson 2002a) - Graham Lane was even
more merciless in attacking the Boards. Speaking as chair of the Education
Committee of the Local Government Association, he told The Daily Telegraph'.
We do not blame the Government. We put the blame on the exam system, which
is too secretive. It is a big, money-making business and the government is now
seeing the effects of having exams run by private companies in competition with
each other.
This episode also raises the question of whether we need just one exam board.
(The Daily Telegraph 21 September: 8)
Occasionally journalists took a wider view and recognised that the issue was not a
simple matter. The Financial Times interpreted the episode as revealing the perils of
“the new breed of regulators” who have become “new decision makers”:
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority did what Whitehall dreads. It
became a loose cannon, a rogue regulator, unpredictable, challenging its
department, apparently unable to supervise its patch effectively but at the same
time taking to the air waves to cause havoc elsewhere.
(Financial Times 3 October: 21)
Ted Wragg, a wry observer of the education scene, saw the crisis as yet another
incident in the predictable chain of events that take place every August:
Every summer two sets of combustible material are rubbed together.... First we
ask examination boards to process 24,000,000 scripts in very little time, a
tenfold increase compared with a few years ago. The resulting mountain of
paper is the tinder. The second element is an inescapable consequence of the
government turning public examination results into a ‘high stakes ’ issue.... That
is the box of matches. Book the fire brigade in advance, as there is bound to be
at least one conflagration every August.
(Guardian Education 24 September: 2)
After the publication of Tomlinson’s Interim Report and the resignations of Sir
William Stubbs and Estelle Morris, the media focus moved elsewhere while the
Boards carried out the reconsideration of the borderline cases. By the time
Tomlinson’s final report was published on 2 December 2002, the issue had lost its