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

97

the Secondary Schools Examinations Council. Where previously the Board of
Education had provided only the Council’s chairman and secretary, the Ministry
would now nominate five of its own representatives as participating members. Local
Authority representation was also increased. However the ten representatives of the
examining boards were replaced by five representatives from universities rather than
from their examining boards. [See Figure 3.3] This new configuration was
responsible for drawing up plans for the new examination that would replace the
School Certificates; the professionals had been dismissed and the design was left to
the amateurs. This failure to appreciate the expertise the examining boards had
developed has persisted and was, I shall suggest, a contributory factor in the crisis
over grades in September 2002, to be considered in Chapter Five. Although the
Boards have subsequently been held responsible for flaws in the new examinations,
they had no part in their overall design. ⁱⁱLike the other seven approved examining
boards, the Board [JMB] had no part in designing the Examinations for the GCE'
(Petch 1953: 177). This information casts rather a different light on McCulloch’s
charge that the examining boards “succeeded in their propaganda war to the extent
that they helped to undermine the reputation of the Report, and of Norwood himself
in the years following the wαr^,,(McCulloch 1994: 141).

Figure 3-3 Post-1946 Changes to SSEC

SSEC 1918-1946                     SSEC from June 1946

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