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urgency as a focus in the media. However it was of major importance to the awarding
bodies.
Tomlinson’s Final Word on the Matter
Regarding the crucial issue of the relationship of QCA to the awarding bodies,
Tomlinson gently rapped QCA’s knuckles:
In particular there is a significant lack of clarity about the boundaries between
QCA's role in overseeing and ensuring the health of the qualifications system
and the awarding bodies’ responsibility for operational management of that
system and the qualifications outcomes to which it leads.
But it should not become involved in managing the detail of the awarding
bodies ’ responsibilities in relation to the setting, marking and grading of A
levels and other qualifications.
(Tomlinson 2002b: para 89)
He therefore recommended that:
...as clear a distinction as possible is maintained between (a) QCA’s
responsibility for monitoring and coordinating delivery, and for overseeing and
guaranteeing standards and the general health of the qualifications system and
(b) the awarding bodies’ individual responsibility for managing effective
delivery of their own qualifications to students, schools and colleges.
(Tomlinson 2002b: para 95)
This might have implied that the Boards were to reclaim a degree of their former
autonomy. Tomlinson did endorse the continued existence of three awarding bodies,
both to provide choice to users and to limit “the risk of system failure present where
there is only one''’ (Tomlinson 2002b: para 100). This rather faint endorsement along
the lines of ‘for fear of finding something worse’ was not lost on the examining
boards because Tomlinson went on to attack “differences between awarding bodies in
their administrative practices...’’(Tomlinson 2002b: para 102) and to recommend
moves toward greater consistency in fee structures, entry procedures, production of
results and appeals procedures. To an examination board officer, “all of it, I think [is]