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

[ParentOfOne]

This is going to sound a very banal question, but can someone please explain the concept of exam boards?

In many other countries, it's the Department of Education that sets the national curriculum and prepares the national exams (GCSE, A-levels and equivalents).

• Why do we have various boards in the UK?
• Are they all private entities?
• Who pays for them?
• Has it always been like this, or was there a time when it was all done by the Department of Education?
• How meaningful are the differences between exam boards? Eg how much of a difference is there between Edexcel maths and AQA maths?
• Is each secondary school free to choose which exam board to follow?
• How comparable are the programs and the difficulty? Does this create an unfair advantage, if getting a high score is easier with one board than another?
• If there are no meaningful differences, why do we have multiple exam boards?

I have seen that Wikipedia provides some history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examination_boards_in_the_United_Kingdom but doesn't address the main questions

I work for an exam board.

They are all private businesses
Schools can choose which ones they use
They all have to follow the qualification specs laid down by Ofqual
Ofqual oversee production of every syllabus and exam
Ofqual and JCQ lay down rigorous assurance of exam boards
Schools pay out of their budgets
Education is devolved in Wales, Scotland and Ireland hence need for different exam boards there
We have different exam boards to prevent a monopoly by 1

I've nothing meaningful to add, but did spend a couple of minutes scratching my head, wondering what the Duke of Edinburgh had to do with exams!

@twistyizzy
But why isn't it done by the Department of Education?

That's the bit I don't get.

Privatisation can make sense in some areas, not here.

Ofqual (which is a government department) sets out the rules, right?
So exam boards cannot do whatever they like, they must follow Ofqual and in the end exam boards cannot be too different from each other

So why outsourcing it to multiple exam boards at all?

I understand the point about devolution, but, within the same nation, why multiple boards?

As for how comparable they are, are you implying that the content and difficulty are comparable, so it is not easier to get high grades with one board than with another?

I think in the past different universities produced different exams. My O levels and A levels were university of London and generally considered more rigorous than some - grammar school. Strangely I seem to remember Cambridge being considered an 'easier' option. This was 40+ years ago though.

So in the U.K. there are multiple exam boards.

OCR came out of Oxford and Cambridge exam board and I think is owned by the university of Cambridge

Edexcel is owned by Pearson and conglomerate.

there’ also AQA, WJEC (Welsh exam board) and a few others.

yep privately owned.

schools pay exam entry fees for each student to enter GCSEs or a levels or BTECs and that’s where their income comes from.

lots also do international qualifications - so IGCSE which many schools abroad enter students for, also international a levels.

in some subjects there are a lot of differences between exam boards. In others not so much. Maths gcse for example is quite similar. Maths a level the same.

yes each school is free to choose which exam board to use although Gove stopped U.K. state schools entering students for international GCSEs.

we have multiple exam boards because they have always been there.

the university of Cambridge has been setting exams since about the twelfth century. In this country education and qualifications have been around a lot lot longer than state education (1870 compulsory state education) or a national curriculum (1988).

one exam board, city and guilds who offer vocational qualifications came out of the medieval guild system of craftsmen and craft qualifications.

"Are you implying that the content and difficulty are comparable, so it is not easier to get high grades with one board than with another", I'm not implying it, I'm directly saying it.
Each AO interprets criteria in slightly different way but they have to have parity with all other AOs.

DfE remit isn't to create and administer exams, it's remit is policy + funding etc. They don't "outsource" because it isn't something they are involved in.

It is a highly regulated sector.

It isn’t done by the department of education because these exams and these exam boards have been in existence much longer than the department of education has.

the department of education as a central government thing only really started in Victorian times. The exam boards already existed.

why nationalise something that already existed and was working fine?

private exam boards were thought to introduce healthy competition to the sector- but they have played a part in the very confusing and complex qualification structures in the uk. European countries, for example, will have one, state approved, way of qualifying a plumber. The uk have a plethora of different awarding bodies competing to offer plumbing qualifications. It’s mad if you ask me, it’s also hugely expensive for schools and colleges who work with up to 50 different awarding bodies with different fees, software platforms etc. hugely costly to the taxpayer.

I think OP might be suggesting "it's not fair".

Don't forget though OP, if exams in any year are apparently "easier" the exam boards set boundaries to reflect this, so that comparable results are available across all years and all boards.

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.

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.

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.

@HostaCentral I think OP might be suggesting "it's not fair".

That was one of the questions.

If the exams are similar enough, as people say, then fairness is not a point. But waste is. There seems to be a lot of redundancy in the process.
One body sets the rules and ensures that multiple bodies do something which is similar enough. Why not have just one single body, then?

I get it that there were historical reasons, but there were historical reasons for all kinds of nonsense we have now got rid of.

@Windthebloodybobbinup private exam boards were thought to introduce healthy competition to the sector- but they have played a part in the very confusing and complex qualification structures in the uk.

But not everything lends itself to privatisation and competition.
By all means, privatise businesses in sectors where consumers have true choice and can truly compare.
By all means, do let consumers and the market decide among Easyjet, Ryanair, British Airways etc

But exam boards? Who would choose based on what? if Ofqual does its job properly, the differences among the various exam boards should be minimal, so what is there to choose?

@Octavia64 why nationalise something that already existed and was working fine?

Because we have nationalised the entity (Ofqual, a government department) which oversees the exam. So the boards now operate differently from before, they don't have the same freedom they used to have

So what is your point OP?

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

@twistyizzy It's not like I expected a random post on Mumsnet to revolutionise the country's education system! :)

My point is that it didn't make sense, so I wanted to understand if there was something I was missing. Seems like there wasn't.

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.

@Octavia64

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

irrelevant strawman. You don't need to nationalise the whole university, just the bit that does the exam board stuff

the exam boards offer international a levels for example and these are used in many other countries

That's very interesting. It wasn't clear to me, so thank you for clarifying. However:

• the English GCSE and the English A-levels are overseen by Ofqual, a UK government department. Foreign countries and organisations are welcome to use them, I suppose, but the rules around these English qualifications do not change just because foreign countries also use them, right?
• The exam boards are free to provide whatever services they want to foreign governments and organisations. The fact that they do is not a valid reason to have multiple exam boards all providing very similar English exams, all overseen by a British government department which must in fact check that they are similar and meet its rules

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

Previous posters said the exact opposite, said that they are all comparable, there isn't an easier one and that it is Ofqual's job to ensure that's the case.

So which is it?

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?).

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.

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

Northern Ireland

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

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?