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

62

The outstanding historian of education administration, Peter Gosden, has recorded
such influence to be a clear aim of education department officials in the middle of the
20th century. He quotes R S Wood, Deputy Secretary of the Board of Education as
suggesting in November 1940 [referring to the education problems that would be
faced when the war ended] that, “/ think this is a matter -where the Board should lead
rather than follow” (Gosden 1976: 238). Although I see this ambition as a step toward
the eventual dominance of education by the department, it is important to note that at
the time the motivation was - at least in the view of Peter Gosden - less based on a
desire for power than on the need to ensure fairness across the nation:

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: 240)

Such claims to be acting in the interests of fairness for all can, of course, always serve
as a justification for increasing central control.

Later in the century, Denis Lawton cited events following the 1944 Education Act as
evidence for his claims regarding the ambitions of civil servants in the education
department. Referring to the Labour Minister Ellen Wilkinson’s being persuaded to
endorse Circular 103, drawn up under the Conservative R A Butler’s term at the
Board of Education and meeting fierce opposition at the Labour Party conference in
the autumn of 1945, Lawton suggests:

This is just one example of ministers being persuaded by civil servants to carry
on with a policy laid down either by a previous administration of a different
political complexion or by the civil servants themselves.

(Lawton 1980: 30)

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