Ken Boston and his team at the QCA were tasked by the government to look into the steep rises in exam fees. These have risen almost in line with independent school fees and yet there has been no hint of an OFT or Competition Commissions investigation, which perhaps shows just how unequal some issues are in education.
The QCA has been beavering away with the QCA’s Director of Regulation and Standards, Isabel Nisbet, recommending to the QCA board that exam boards publish their fees a year in advance.
Nisbet also hinted that a price cap might be necessary for the fees for Diplomas and the revised A-Levels. Neither idea will create much joy at the three major exam boards.
However, there is a huge gap between recommendations in internal QCA board papers, obtaining a remit from the DfES and implementing any of the suggested changes. What is probably more worrying was the final point (4.5) which said, ‘The Board requested that as fees had been increasing at well above the rate of inflation that it be presented with any proposals for criteria to apply that might be appropriate for limiting awarding body fees’.
At the board meeting where this discussion took place Board members with potential conflicts of interest were asked to identify themselves but this annex has not been published on the QCA’s website. Fortunately Carol Copeland, the QCA’s Director of Legal and Corporate affairs, thought while such interests should be noted they were ‘marginal or remote’. If this was a professional opinion then why not publish the list of people and their possible conflicts of interest. That’s one of the great things about quangos - self regulation and weak oversight.
The other important issue which was raised and dismissed as a problem is the re-sit culture of A-Levels. It was pointed out that there is no limit on re-sits, something that fundamentally undermines credibility in what used to be seen as the UK’s gold standard. A call to action? No, the Board just requested more information about why students re-sit (to get better marks). It’s ironic that for 2500 years alchemists tried to turn lead into gold and yet it has taken less than a decade for bodies like the QCA to turn gold into lead.
www.qca.org.uk
