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

Its probably amongst the many things that should never have been privatised in the first place.

Surely the way you'd nationalise would be to merge the exam boards. Because id bet its not a case of one is better at everything they'd each have their strengths.

The problem is, if you nationalised it which board do you nationalise?

there’s three big ones. Suppose you nationalise OCR. Let’s leave aside the difficulties that the people who write the papers for OCR almost certainly write IGCSE and other papers as well and that questions go through the OCR testing process.

edexcel and the others are now banned from competing in the U.K. market.

that’s clearly unfair. The government would essentially have chosen one to nationalise and the others to just stop doing what they are doing.

it would be subject to various legal challenges - restraint of trade etc.

consider if it was car manufacturing. The government nationalises Land Rover - fine. It then bans all other cars from sale in the U.K. so that everyone has to use Land Rover - not fine and breaks any number of laws.

so they could nationalise OCR. But they can’t ban the others from writing and selling their exams.

when Gove introduced the new GCSEs most state schools switched to IGCSE - the old ones that the exam boards were still running and were still
available.

Gove had to say that the IGCSEs didn’t count in the league tables to force state schools to switch, and most private schools still haven’t because the reformed GCSEs aren’t noticeably better and in some ways are worse.

the exam boards make a good living writing and selling qualifications that the U.K. has abandoned - o levels, IGcSEs (old style GCSEs) etc.

I'm not a commercial lawyer so I have no idea

Because destroying a system and setting a whole new one up is more resource-intensive than maintaining the status-quo.

Exactly as I said in my first answer, multile boards prevent a monopoly and yes Gove failed due to anti-monopoly rules amongst other things ie expense.

Gove wanted to have a single exam board for each subject but failed - if he couldn't do it then it probably isn't possible. I'm sure I heard anti-monopoly laws came into it.

Scrapping the exam boards and nationalising exams would be way too expensive.

Up until recently I assumed England had one exam board and everyone sat the same Math GCSE / A level paper at exactly the same time.

Surely multiple examples boards coming up with the same but different examples papers is just daft.
An increased admin cost that isn't really needed?

Northern Ireland

Ireland is a different country and IS NOT part of the UK.

@ParentOfOne it's Department for Education (DfE) not Department of Education.

It is as I said but I also said each AO interprets in slightly different ways and lay out the Q in slightly different ways within the confines of the requirements laid out by Ofqual.

Ofqual dictate the "difficulty level" and then compare and calibrate across AOs.

They also review pass rates and grade boundaries which have to be submitted for scrutiny.

That makes sense . I understand the history behind why England has several different exam boards, but I think the DofE should write exams for state schools as they write the National Curriculum (don't they?).

That makes sense . I understand the history behind why England has several different exam boards, but I think the DofE should write exams for state schools as they write the National Curriculum (don't they?).

Schools will look at the syllabus to find the best fit for their students, some are more "accessible" than others.

i suspect the part you are missing is that that these qualifications are not just used in England.

the exam boards offer international a levels for example and these are used in many other countries. Cambridge international (OCR is the branding of their “home” offering for England) have written bespoke a levels for Brunei for example.

https://help.cambridgeinternational.org/hc/en-gb/articles/203558541-What-is-the-difference-between-OCR-A-Levels-and-Cambridge-International-A-Levels

Cambridge international assessment also provides O levels and other qualifications - these were abolished in the U.K. but are still used elsewhere eg Singapore.

the o levels in Singapore are jointly run by the Singapore education ministry and university of Cambridge.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore-Cambridge_GCE_Ordinary_Level

so the short answer as to why not nationalise is that the exam boards do not just set “home” exams in the U.K. they also set and are involved with assessment in many many other countries.

if you nationalised them then the British government would find themselves trying to run assessment systems in
multiple other countries and regulate exams that have long since been abolished in Britain.

quite aside from the issue of how you’d nationalise part of the university of Cambridge.

So what is your point OP?

They aren't going to change this current set up so what is your original point?

I agree it does seem to create a lot of non-jobs. Someone to set the guideslines for what the exams look like, people at the exam boards to prepare the papers, then someone at the regulatory to check those exams are similar enough. But that academia for you lots of brains but not much sense.

The English system always seems odd to me. In Scotland there's the SQA who set the exams so wherever your child lives, they'll be doing exactly the same exam at the same time.

Simple.

Scotland only has one exam board.

Positions in the SQA are Scottish Government appointed.

Also we had our own, single exam board before devolution, we’ve always had a different educational system.