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

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the duties of citizenship which will, as we are at present governed, infallibly fall
upon every one of these boys and girls within a few years.

(Norwood undated: 4)

In regard to external examinations, Norwood had very strong views. He was
conscious of “the sort of harm that the examinations system is doing, since the
questions which is asked in not how best to equip for life and the demands of life, but
how best to pass the examination’’ (Norwood undated: 4). He was an advocate of
what is now termed ‘formative assessment’. Norwood’s argument “stressed two
central issues: the guidance of the child, and the freedom of the teacher ” (McCulloch
1994: 138) The Norwood report implies that it was this concern for pupils’ best
interests that lay behind his antipathy to what he saw as the negative influence of the
university examining boards on the grammar-school curriculum. Certainly
McCulloch feel that Norwood’s model:

...asserted in the strongest terms teachers’ own professional responsibility in
the domain of examinations and assessment, against what was later to emerge
as the ‘market ’ view of the accountability of teachers and schools to ‘the public ’
for the outcomes of public examinations.

(McCulloch 1994: 138)

During an interview, Peter Gosden suggested other motives. He believes that
Norwood saw an opportunity to extricate private school pupils from what he saw as
the stranglehold of the Boards’ School Certificates. Gosden described Norwood’s
attitude as, “Why should ‘our people’ have the same certificates as everyone else?'’
(Gosden 2000) Presumably Norwood recognised the value that the ‘branding’ of a
private school would provide to school-produced assessments. Whatever his motives,
and despite his role as chairman of the SSEC implying support for examinations,
Norwood’s report recommended the phasing out of external examinations, except for
university entrance, over seven years. Instead, schools would produce what might be
termed a ‘profile’ of pupils which would provide a more individual version of an

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