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

74

question of a qualification title and opted to proceed separately. A direct result of that
relatively minor quibble was the unique English structure of independent university
examining boards providing a national qualifications system. One is reminded of the
nursery rhyme:

For want of a battle

The Kingdom was lost,

And all for the want

Of a horse shoe nail.

In this instance, the possibility of a single national examination provision was lost for
want of an agreed title for the qualification.

The creation also in 1858 of the London Matriculation¹ ensured the availability of a
university entrance examination for a wider segment of society, because University
College, the original institution of the University of London, was the first to drop a
Church of England affiliation from its entry requirements.² The almost coincidental
creation of the first three examining boards had occurred not through a particular
policy decision but, in the preferred English manner, from voluntary initiatives.

The reputation of the new examinations was initially coloured by their connection
with the middle-class schools. Grammar schools that already had an established link
with a university were not at first tempted to use the new examinations. They elicited
strong objections from the College of Preceptors, who perceived the university
examinations to be invading their territory, as indeed they were. They claimed that
“ Oxford examiners [were] not at all well suited to examine the studies of middle-class
schools'' (Roach 1971: 90). EIowever, because of the low esteem in which the College
was held, this protest may well have had the opposite effect from that intended.

Gradually the examinations began to prove their worth.

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