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grades crisis has done, it has demonstrated that it is foolhardy for the amateur to
tamper with that process.
It was, in my view, this realisation that lay behind the government’s unwillingness to
endorse the wholesale changes proposed by the Tomlinson Committee in October
2004. The 2005 White Paper containing the government’s response implied a
continuing regard for the awarding bodies by maintaining that:
GCSEs and A levels ...will be kept as a cornerstone of 14-19 learning. They will
continue to be assessed through rigorous external examinations; and they will
be reformed to increase stretch and challenge and to improve progression.
(DffiS 2005:45)
This seems to me to indicate that the experience of the problems of Curriculum 2000
provided a severe lesson in the hazards of change that has not been clearly thought
through. What appear as underlying good intentions to proceed at a more deliberate
pace are signalled by the promise “to review progress in 2008”.
Once again, a major change appeared in a very understated fashion in the White
Paper. This was the half-sentence which quietly stated, ''We will...support those
universities who wish to have marks as well as grade.s...”(DffiS, 2005 #302). This
simple statement, at a stroke, addressed the longstanding complaint by universities
that A levels currently are proving inadequate for the increasing burden of selection.
This tactic should enable a period of calm reflection so that the promised review in
2008 can proceed without at least one very vocal pressure group as an inhibiting
factor.
Although to date at least one of the awarding bodies is expressing some concern at
QCA’s invitation that they should “think about alternative structures” such as fixed-
price contracting deals for designing syllabuses or devising assessment schemes,
(AQA3 2005), at least the signs suggest that discussions are alive and continuing with