I have felt the absence of other research against which to locate my own. However, I
have pursued my interest with a view to providing at least some insight into what I
found to be an obscure corner of the educational world.
While education history may for the most part have overlooked the examining boards,
education sociology is clear that there can be no question that examinations play a
significant role in what Pierre Bourdieu described as the reproduction of cultural
advantage. (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977) Sociologists from Durkheim to Bemstein
have consistently identified the significant role of examinations - and, I infer, their
providers - in determining the distribution of power in a society. Emil Durkheim
noted in 1956 that in the nineteenth century, competitive examinations with rewarding
consequences for those who succeeded became widespread in schools, thereby
"reinforcing the individualisation that has become characteristic of industrial
society....''' (Quoted in Eggleston 1990: 57) In 1971, Basil Bernstein’s often-cited
statement would also suggest a primary role in the social power structure for
examination providers as assessors of public knowledge:
How a society selects, classifies, distributes, transmits and evaluates the
educational knowledge it considers to be public, reflects both the distribution of
power and the principles of social control.
(Bemstein 1971: 59)
Bourdieu, whom Bemstein in his study Class, codes and control described as “the
critical theorist” (Bernstein 1990: 69), certainly included examinations as one of the
mechanisms which facilitate the maintenance of cultural advantage. In fact his
account of the objective of sociological analysis could well describe the objective of
this study:
...de porter au jour les structures les plus profondement enfouis des differents
mondes et aussi les mecanismes qui tendent a en assurer la reproduction ou la
transformation.
(Bourdieu 1989: 7)