Please explain exam boards to me: why so many? Why doesn't the DofE do it?

@mathanxiety

apologies I think I may have been less than clear.

i was describing the setting up of the (National) department for education in Victorian times, which was in 1856.

in 1856 there would definitely have been an attitude of “it’s working why mess with it” towards the exam boards and a reluctance to let government get involved (with anything!) sometimes known as “laissez-faire”.

that’s certainly not my personal attitude towards education these days! As said, I left teaching two years ago and like many ex teachers I have a lot of strong opinions on many aspects of the education system!

There is a lot of history and identity in the English education system that has grown organically. It has been explained as regards exam boards. As regards faith and grammar schools too, a lot of them have roots going back hundreds of years and with that comes a strong sense of ethos and identity and pride and a value system. It really is not worth destroying for some fad, nor is it actually in tune with the way the current political wind is blowing. Would be more political suicide to go against stuff that works and has done for many years. It is complex and piecemeal the English education system as a whole and can be difficult to understand, but most of it works extremely successfully. There are just the parts that need sorting out which I have highlighted again and again.

The topics covered, the texts chosen….it has been politicised.

🎯

And that statement alone has given me the biggest reason for England to keep operating with multiple private exam boards.

Scotgov have made a mess of Scottish Education

In Scotland, the exam syllabus is influenced by the Scottish government’s independence agenda.

The highly centralised education system of Ireland, with a national curriculum and exams developed by committees of teachers and civil servants, seems to work pretty well.

Can you define 'working fine'?

We used to have a good education system too. No longer….

Im finding your posts quite aggressive.
The system we have here allows for religious schools based on choice

That is a system I believe in. For everyone to choose how their children can be educated.

For some faith is extremely important for others it isn’t.
If faith is of no importance then schools which are not faith schools are better suited to those families.

I wouldn’t want to live in a country that doesnt allow for and hence appreciate choice for all its citizens !

Please don’t bring my children into a discussion on here as if you know better. It’s very rude !

I am glad my pp to you explaining the differences in some boards re question types was helpful

It seems to me that one aspect of the GCSE and A Level system (and other qualifications regulated by Ofqual and run by the exam boards) is the personnel involved. Exams are currently set, marked and moderated by people contracted for those roles, and the majority of them are subject specialist working teachers. They have a vested interest in the fairness, value and integrity of the exams they are engaged with. They set exams that take into account the needs of teachers and students, and exams are marked not to some arbitrary benchmark, but with an understanding of what can be expected from a student after two years’ study.

This is fair to students and reasonably economic to operate. An assistant examiner, for example, will mark a set amount of work and be paid per task, and there are few overheads - few earn enough from exam work to run to the expense of pensions, and there’s no sick leave or maternity leave to factor in, and no redundancy costs if entries fall and fewer examiners are needed. It is also a brilliant form of professional development for teachers at no cost to their schools, and they earn money for engaging with that professional development, so it’s a win-win there.

I wouldn’t want to see exams set by full-time civil servants who haven’t seen the inside of a classroom since they left school, and the cost of entries would certainly rise if there was a full time workforce producing and marking papers, because of the increased overheads.

And just to clarify, AQA is a charity. Any profit is reinvested in developing qualifications. All the other boards are for-profit businesses.

The difference of course with religious schools ( in comparison to those institutions that sre completely private ) is that the religious community pays towards that school. In their donations made on a regular basis.
If you aren’t paying into that you are gaining by keeping your money for yourself
If you are paying into that you are gaining by getting priority placement.

There are alternative schools paid fully by the tax payer. It’s not like those who don’t pay more sre left with nothing. There is provision for all

I think that’s fare for all
It saves the tax payer money too.( A small bonus for all )

There used to be more differences- so one might have more coursework and one might have a higher weighting to exams for eg. But all that’s gone now - they’re all more or less the same. Different poems in the literature anthologies is one difference that still exists.

It is done by one exam board in Scotland so yet it is possible & they also have a commercial side for overseas work.

Tbh I didn’t read the part about hospitals at all as I think the issue is deflecting

Obviously saving lives and health care is very different from education.
however
We could look at this in a different way
private health centres and hospitals do not treat those who don’t pay privately. ( the nhs sometimes pay extra on people’s behalf ) So really, we already have selective medical care

This is similar to private Schools

Its just another option and takes the full financial burden away from the tax payer

You may not agree but I think choise is a good thing and obviously anyone that’s happy to and can pay for themselves or at least subsidise the system is a good thing.
There are other alternatives in abundance

FYi exam boards are usually educational charities so don't make a "profit" as such ie not to share holders. They aren't allowed to "profit" from what they do, precisely because they are part funded by schools/colleges etc.
As an example, our AO builds and pays for schools in 3rd world countries.

Interesting thread.

I agre with you in both points.
Different exam boards generating their profit each and having CEOs each doesn't sound efficient.
And, if each of them is asking the questions differently, and it is decided for the whole school, it sounds even worse to me - so if you are great biologist with low essay skills on a school which picks up the essay-ish board, your mark suffer.
If having a choice of method is useful, and it probably is, setting it on school & subject level is not really fair.

And yes, state paying for school places discriminating by faith is weird as well.

I see fairness in education as an important value, but not everyone shares this view. It seems that many posters are just defending the status quo and historical reasons, with "not the biggest problem" shut downs.
However, this is a discussion forum, why shouldn't people discuss how the world could look like?

(I'm not talking now about the "I don't believe centralised education" posters. That is an opinion about what should we aspire to, so that's relevant addition to the discussion)

I think what you are missing is this: the idea of the exam board and people starting companies that are exam boards happened long before the education system was one system, free at the point of access, serving all in the same way. Exam boards started as private companies which existed to award qualifications to those worthy of them, long before education for all was a concept.

When secondary education became free and compulsory, and later when exams around 16 became the normal for the vast majority of people. the exam boards existed. They had already been running exams for years. They had already developed areas/subjects that they examined, and had experience in setting and marking papers in these subjects.

There was no need for the Government to suddenly declare that most of these organisations could no-longer examine in the new state sector and so put most of them out of business (with inevitable job losses etc) while having to quickly expand one to be several times bigger than it already was, and able to administer and mark exams in subjects it has no experience in. So they didn't! They gradually increased the streamlining of the exams, eventually establishing Ofqual "to maintain standards and public confidence in qualifications and operates as a non-ministerial government department reporting to Parliament." but kept the separate exam boards with all their knowledge and experience.