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

66

public could serve a useful purpose in society. The competitive aspect of
examinations accorded well with their belief in the character-building effect of sports
like cricket and rugby. The sporting notion of ‘a level playing field’ was another
attractive feature of examinations as a fair means of selection. However, it was the
problem of administering an empire that led the Victorians to turn to examinations as
a solution.

As the 19th century progressed and imperial responsibilities grew ever more
demanding, it became clear that there was a need for improved methods of selecting
administrators. Established practice, based on gentlemanly status and nepotism, was
delivering people who were proving unsuitable for the imperial responsibilities
required of them. “By 1858 the belief in ‘competition as against restriction or private
favour’ was in the air, for it fitted the ethos of the age” (Roach 1971: 18). It was
natural that in their quest for a fair and effective means of selection the products of the
Cambridge Tripos or Oxford Greats would turn to examinations as the ideal solution.

In order to structure what seemed a series of random developments, I have
constructed a matrix showing the principal steps in the process of developing an
examining system in England [See Figure 3.1], with summaries of the rationale
which lay behind them and the effects they had. This section will expand on those
steps which by 1918 saw a national system of secondary examinations administered
by eight different university examining boards which dominated the body established
to regulate the system.

It was a teachers’ organisation that claimed the credit for first administering
simultaneous examinations to large groups in secondary schools. The College of
Preceptors, comprising mainly the headmasters of the much-criticised ‘middle-class

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