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

Things can be explained differently but if the text is a choice between the Grapes of Wrath or Great Expectations, the teacher can’t teach 1984. It would be a very narrow curriculum if every child only did those 2 books and this would cover a number a years before the syllabus changed.

ultimately however the teachers teach something, the children have to do the same questions

Presumably it wouldn’t work like this, and instead the government would set up a new academic qualification - let’s call it the eGCSE.

The eGCSE is set, marked and moderated by DofE. Then the government mandates that this is the standard qualification for 16 year olds that impacts league tables etc.

No one other than the DofE is certified to issue an eGCSE and therefore the other boards have to diversify or cease to exist, or find schools that want the old qualifications.

Of course that in itself is expensive when we have a broadly working system.

But who sets SATs exams? As these are standardised crossed the country aren’t they? So there must be some precedent.

What are you basing that assertion on? Like a PP said: if the syllabus specifies 3 set themes around Macbeth then a teacher isn't going to teach a 4th or 5th because 5 + 6 simply won't ever come up in the exam.

@SheilaFentiman Ofqual ensures equivalence - that’s not the same as “aren’t that different”. Different boards will cover entirely different periods for History etc.

Let's say that 3 exam boards cover 3 different periods. This means Ofqual has rules that those 3 periods are equivalent and are all valid choices.
None of this means we need to pay private companies to do that.
Ofqual could still accept those 3 periods and schools could choose which of those 3 periods to teach.

None of what I'm hearing convinces me of the need to have, and pay for with our taxes, multiple private businesses acting as exam boards.

That's your opnion and you're entitled to it but believe me, there are way more pressing issues in education than different exam boards!

Try looking at Ofqual's websites at how many different exam boards are regulated. You are thinking only of GCSEs and A Levels. What about all the various technical and vocational qualifications (especially for the 16-18 market). The expense of setting up an all encompassing exam board from scratch would be astonishingly expensive, and as a country we do not have spare cash ATM.

Also the AOs provide other educational adjunct services, from educational publishing to essential research, plus international work. A lot of this will feed towards subsidising exam fees. Would a national board do that? I think AOs do a lot more than you realise.

Ofqual’s job is to make sure that the GCSEs offered by the exam boards are of essentially comparable quality.

this does NOT mean that there are not significant differences between them.

example: physics a level offers various options. Schools can choose which option they teach. In particular AQA offer an astrophysics option which is very popular (for obvious reasons).
OCR don’t.

so lots of schools choose AQA physics because it offers an option that is popular with students.

the physics a levels are of equivalent difficulty, and that is what ofqual measure. The content however is different.

this is also true for history - you can study different periods at gcse depending which exam board and option you choose. It’s also true for English Lit - different exam boards offer different choices of books/plays/etc.

What taxes are going towards these companies? The exams are paid for per exam per candidate. Doesn’tmatter if it is one exam board or multiple, the cost is the same.

if there is a bit of extra cost for the DofE to oversee the different boards, it would be de minimus in the grand scheme of things.

@twistyizzy If you read what I have written, you will notice that nowhere have I said nor even only remotely implied that this should be a top priority.

The complete lack of accountability of academies is a more pressing problem. This has enabled the kind of abuse we saw at Holland Park school and Mossbourne. I made a post about it last year https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/5225872-mossbourne-academies-investigations-into-alleged-emotional-harm-and-abuse-why-are-needlessly-strict-academies-unaccountable and nothing has changed: no one has been held accountable.
Again: the worst of privatisations: these schools want to be independent and tell us that if we don't like them we can send our kids elsewhere, but we don't have the option not to fund them with our taxes.

Or the fact that 1/3 of state schools are religious and discriminate based on religion in their admission criteria. We would not accept a state-funded hospital for Catholics sending non-Catholics to a longer queue, so why we accept it for schools is beyond me. There are historical reasons, like the churches owning the land, but there are always historical reasons behind all the injustices we have now got rid of. We wouldn't fund a Catholic hospital that discriminates against Catholics if the Catholic church donated the land, so that's really not a valid example.

Sorry, I got carried away.

the government contract out sats.

pearson (so Edexcel) have the current contract.

@BananaPeels What taxes are going towards these companies? The exams are paid for per exam per candidate. Doesn’tmatter if it is one exam board or multiple, the cost is the same.

Exactly that: these exam boards charge per exam per candidate.
State schools pay this cost.
And where do state schools get their money, if not from our taxes??

SchoolsWeek wrote about this ever-increasing cost https://schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-over-a-barrel-as-exam-fees-rise-again/

as did Tes https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/exam-boards-gcse-and-a-level-entry-fee-increases

Yes and your point being? The exams have to be paid for - doesn’t matter if we have multiple boards or a single board

edited to add- if you reduce the amount of boards and have a monopoly - the costs will rise

So make parents pay then and means test the threshold. Reduce pressure on school budgets

Personally I think there should be a simple English Language and Maths national qualification at the end of Year 10, online, after Year 10 mocks, that everyone sits, as a sort of benchmark of ability in maths and English enough to get a job later on. I think the resits in Maths and English are a complete disgrace and kids should not have to go through that. If they fail the Year 10 one, they can do another lot at the end of Year 11 after GCSEs. It should be completely computer marked so no subjectivity in English language.

And picking up on the national textbooks issue:

in general, the impression I am getting is that you think there should be a uniform education system.
there should be a national curriculum that all schools stick to and one lot of exams.

there are countries a bit like that. The closest I can think of is China where there are nationally mandated textbooks and the exams are set by government. However even there they are loosening up and there are now three approved textbooks available (for maths) although the local government chooses which textbook is used.
the Gaokao which is the uni entrance exam is actually set by local authorities and China is currently trying to iron out variations in it as students in more deprived areas have to get higher scores to get into university than for example students in Beijing.

in England generally there’s a history of tolerance of difference in education and a lack of trust in central government.

we are not like China where there is one mandated Chinese textbook and the whole country learns the same poems for their exams. I personally wouldn’t want that.

there should be variety in the system. Schools should be able to choose different periods of history/different books for English lit/etc etc.

uniformity has a price.

Give me diversity and choice over 1 state owned exam board! I want government as far away from education as possible. It's bad enough we have the national curriculum at times.

No I disagree that parents should pay for exams. That means some kids with stingy parents won’t get to do 10 GCSEs, even if they would have benefitted from it.
Besides, plenty of teachers do lots of marking and rely on that extra income.
I do not have a problem with the exam boards per se, healthy competition is good, the standards and regulation is already quite heavy. It is just hard to recruit markers now, just like teachers and if they have to pay them more, they have to pay them more. That is a cost Central Government should be willing to pay, rather than squeezing school budgets.

That was in response to PP saying that AOs take taxes away. That's the alternative.

But it's enshrined within HR act that parents have a choice and state can't interfere with parental religion/ethics etc.

We need more choice in state schools, not less. I am vehemently against any form of homogenous state run educational institutions.

@Octavia64 in general, the impression I am getting is that you think there should be a uniform education system.
there should be a national curriculum that all schools stick to and one lot of exams.

Absolutely not! I have never said nor implied that! You have misunderstood completely. Big time.

I don't want uniformity. I would want to avoid having the worst of centralised government oversight coupled with the worst of privatisation. Which is what we have now That's very, very different.

We still have a government department (Ofqual) approving exam content.
But exam boards are outsourced to private businesses, which we pay with our own tax money, which we subject to government control.

Saying that this seems to me like the worst of both worlds doesn't mean I want uniformity, and doesn't mean I think exam boards are the most pressing problem in education today

Because there are way more qualifications than just GCSE and Alevels. Each exam board has a specialism and focuses on that specialism. It wouldn't be possible to incorporate every vocational, technical and academic qualification under 1 organisation.

I genuinely don’t understand what is wrong with the current system. Seems to work efficiently and has plenty of choice of schools. What is exactly the problem with it?

@twistyizzy But it's enshrined within HR act that parents have a choice and state can't interfere with parental religion/ethics etc.
We need more choice in state schools, not less. I am vehemently against any form of homogenous state run educational institutions.

???? Surely you are not saying this nonsense in good faith?

We currently have a system where everyone's taxes pay for schools which discriminate admission based on religion. How is that fair???

You are welcome to teach your children whatever religion you want to teach them. But why use MY tax money for a school which prioritises YOU discriminating against ME? This nonsense would be unconstitutional in many countries, but, hey, we don't even have a proper written constitution here...

I ask again: would you accept a state-funded hospital which discriminates against patients of a certain religion, or of no religion? If you wouldn't, why do you accept it with state schools? Just because you happen to benefit from that discrimination?

Yes it's under Article 2 combimed, or alongside, Article 14

It isn't about discrimination, it's about parental having the right to have their child educated according to their religion etc. That's why you legally couldn't get rid of them.

Exactly, this is a complete non-issue. OP has an agenda