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structured around the policy shifts which altered the balance in control of the
examining boards. This will involve an analysis based on the third element of this
theoretical framework: policy formation. Once again, this is complex territory,
involving the "messy realities of influence, pressure, dogma, expediency, conflict,
compromise, intransigence, resistance, error, opposition and pragmatism'' that
characterise education policy in the UK (Ball 1990: 9).
From their origins as independent bodies devised in the 19th century to regularise the
selection process for universities, the examining boards have experienced a series of
policy changes that materially affected them as organisations: a process described by
one writer as "the progressive nationalization of assessment and examination policy"
(Wolf 2002a: 221). Using the policy changes as the fundamental structuring
mechanism of the study provides a lens through which to examine the process as it
gathered momentum. However, as with education history, education policy analysis is
a contested area.
In a seminar at the Institute of Education focussed on researching policy, Arm
Hodgson spoke of the difficulty of understanding "how education policy is created,
enacted and implemented and where power and influence reside." (IoE, 29
November, 2001) The tri-partite balance between government, Local Education
Authorities and teachers has long gone. Yet the expansion of educational quangos,
increased autonomy for providers within an education market, devolution in Scotland
and Wales and a "veritable flood of different types of policy documents" clouds the
policy-making process. (Hodgson 2003: 6)
It has been the case that writers avoid the issue through the use of terms like ‘the
educational establishment’ which has frequently served as a form of shorthand to