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

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This emphasis on the need for the Board to assert itself and to offer active
leadership corresponded exactly to the increasingly widespread view that the
disparity of provision between the various local authorities was no longer
acceptable and that far more emphasis needed to be placed on national policy;
only greater centralization could undo the inequity between children of different
districts which became so apparent during the evacuation and could ensure that
there would be more purposeful national planning in education.

(Gosden, 1976 #146: 240)

Then I began further to rethink my position after reading Michael Barber’s
description of being unable, in opposing the 1988 Education Act, to offer positive
solutions to what was clearly an unacceptable state of affairs.:

We...had missed two fundamental points....Firstly, we offered no credible
alternative to what was perceived by the public at large ...to be an inadequate
existing state of affairs. Secondly, we had completely failed to identify a series
of underlying social changes which would sooner or later have forced a radical
shift in education policy whether we liked it or not.

(Barber 1996: 37)

Data I have considered which demonstrate the unacceptably low rates of attainment
by English young people are convincing evidence that the current qualification system
is still unacceptable. I concede that, since the voluntarist approach of the Schools
Council in the 1960s and 1970s was ineffectual, government has a responsibility to
take remedial action; accepting that responsibility is not necessarily a simple quest for
power.

A reassessment of my evidence indicates that the centralisation process may have
been the result less of a clear-cut policy than of a series of attempts to address
admitted weaknesses. Nevertheless, I suggest that at least some of the resulting
problems might have been alleviated had the examining boards been invited to
contribute and involve their high level of assessment expertise. The State’ adopting of
an oppositional position and imposing change has not succeeded. A more positive
approach would involve these bodies who are genuinely motivated to contribute to
finding effective solutions to the need for qualification change. In a recent

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