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

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suitable for large-scale analysis, is not sufficiently developed for the nuances which I
was seeking in my subjects’ responses. Instead, I transcribed the interviews myself, an
important first step in ensuring a familiarity with the content. Then I went through the
transcripts using the interview headings to structure the analysis, making notes on
each individual’s unstructured responses, and comparing these with their subsequent
responses to my prompts. These data I have woven into the relevant sections as
evidence to support or counter the point I was pursuing. I have included quite lengthy
excerpts in order to provide the full flavour of the interview. I was aware of the risks
in lifting brief citations out of context.

3 Constructing a coherent chapter structure

I have outlined above the rationale for the structure of the first part of the thesis: an
introduction, a survey of the literature and an exposition of my theoretical framework
and methodology, followed by a chapter which locates the examining boards
historically and analyses the changes they experienced up to 1988.

The central section comprises a very long chapter focused on the stresses the boards
experienced during the 1990s. Although I emphasise the inter-related nature of the
events of the 1990s, for the sake of coherence I have broken them down into
‘external’ and ‘internal’ stresses.

The grades crisis of September 2002 was, of course, unforeseen as I began my
research. However, I felt that it must be included as a sort of dramatic proof of my
claim that the boards had essentially lost professional control of the qualifications
they were administering. The interviews confirmed that all these principal actors saw

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