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

39

limitation which I have attempted to Couterbalance through the use of interviews with
participants in those events.

When moving to the central analysis of the major changes experienced by the
examining boards during the 1990s, one has as a major resource the considerable
number of reports and white papers produced during that decade. Once again,
however, despite the central focus on post-16 qualifications and the bodies that award
them in that literature, very little of their content addresses the boards directly. An
advantage I had as an ‘insider’, a role whose other implications are discussed below,
was access to confidential papers of the examining board of which I was a trustee. I
have requested and received permission to use any data derived from those papers. On
rare occasions I have used my own diaries to verify dates or issues discussed.

Interviews with major actors

The other principal source of my empirical data was a series of interviews. Because
this phase of my research closely approximates what Yin describes as investigating “a
contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context” (Yin 1994:13), other tenets of
Yin’s approach to case study seemed appropriate in constructing this aspect of my
study. Certainly his injunction that “You should bring your own prior expert
knowledge...” (Yin 1994:123) seemed to apply to this study, where my prior
knowledge of the field was an important factor. For contextualising some aspects of
the changes in post-16 education, I would be drawing on my experience as a teacher
living through the events I was considering. In designing the interview schedule (See
Appendix for a list of the interviews), I would be relying on my active involvement

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