The Case for a Single, Unified Exam Board in England

As millions of students across England open their GCSE results today, the focus will be on their subject grades which symbolise years of hard work. Very few will pay attention to the letters AQA, OCR or Edexcel which sit next to their results and indicate the different exam boards in England. On their future applications and CVs will simply be ‘GCSE Mathematics – Grade 7’; nobody is ever going to ask whether it was OCR or Edexcel.

So why do we have different exam boards? Is there any benefit to one student sitting their maths exam with AQA but their friend in another school sitting a completely different maths paper under OCR? Why can one student end up sitting different exam boards for each of their different subjects? Should we scrap the current system in favour of a single, national exam board?

This post will explore the cases for continuing with the multi-board exam system and its alternative: switching to a single, unified exam board.

An overview of the current exam board system
Historical moves towards a single, unified exam board
The case for maintaining multiple exam boards
The case for a single, unified exam board
Final thoughts

An overview of the current exam board system

In England, there are three main exam boards responsible for GCSEs. AQA accounts for around half of all examinations taken^[i], with the rest being covered by Edexcel and OCR. The exam boards are commercial organisations that are not Government run. As such they compete with one another for profits and market share through gaining contracts from schools^[ii].

Schools are free to decide their exam boards, and this can see different subjects within one school opting for different exam boards. A single student might be sitting their History exam under AQA, English literature under Edexcel and Mathematics under OCR. Equally, different schools may opt for different exam boards for the same subject. For example, a student in one school may sit the OCR Mathematics paper, whilst a student in another school sits the AQA Mathematics paper, with topics being different on each.

Subject departments decide their exam board based on various factors ranging from current staff experience with specific boards, exam question styles, content covered and arguably difficulty^[iii]. Yet, given all schools follow a national curriculum, it is up to the Government agency Ofqual to ensure there are minimal differences between the exam boards and that students can be adequately compared across boards and within subjects^[iv].

Such a system of multiple exam boards is not the norm across the world. High flying education systems like Finland and Singapore are just a few of the nations that operate under a single, unified exam board^[v]. It is therefore not necessarily the case that having multiple exam boards is the optimal strategy.

Historical moves towards a single, unified exam board

The last time that a unified exam board was seriously floated in England was under the coalition government up to 2015. Schools Minister Nick Gibb wanted to collapse the three exam boards under a single, unified exam board^[i]. His calls came in 2014, after OCR nearly missed their deadline to mark papers in time for results day^[ii]. This was seen as a farcical product of the multi-exam board system, with many students coming unacceptably close to not receiving their results.

In a similar sense in 2012, then Education Secretary Michael Gove proposed having each subject sit the same exam board nationwide. A single exam board would bid for the right to run the exams for that subject each year, to ensure better uniformity^[iii]. Gove had argued that greater competition between boards might have contributed to declining standards^[iv]. With the exam boards being commercial organisations, they seek to prove to each school that they can offer the best value for money to win the contract. This resulted in evidence that over the years there was a dumbing down of exams in an effort to gain clients for their papers by proving they could get students the best results^[v]. Despite the efforts of Ofqual, this competition was therefore blamed for grade inflation^[vi].

Ofqual has since made a more concerted effort to prevent such grade inflation. The regulator now reprimands exam boards If they show a year-on-year increase in results^[vii]. But a bureaucratic nightmare has emerged where boards seek to make their results look more difficult to attain legitimacy.

Both efforts to move to a more unified exam board system were unsuccessful after being met with great pushback and even legal action from the exam boards^[viii].

The recently axed T-Levels were delivered by just one exam board to ‘protect the standard’ of the qualification^[ix]. It was widely believed that this was a dry run for A-Levels and GCSEs, and it will be interesting to see if this logic is pursued by the new Government.

The case for maintaining multiple exam boards

Little has changed since those calls for a unified board a decade ago. So, what weight has there been behind the argument for maintaining the current multi-board system?

A core argument to the multi-board model is that the competition between boards provides schools with choice in terms of qualification content and delivery^[i]. This should allow schools to choose the most suitable board for their specific situation. Varied syllabus content and question styles can be selected by school departments to cater to the different strengths of staff and students within a school^[ii]. Furthermore, this variation in content runs in line with Government intentions for greater curriculum freedom, and so the multi-board system is a means to facilitate this end^[iii].

There is also the argument that the competition between exam boards drives up standards as each board seeks to innovate and indicate heightened quality over their competitors^[iv]. Moving to a unified exam board may threaten this benefit of competition.

The role of Ofqual should alleviate any concerns that competition between exam boards might be responsible for lowering standards^[v]. As such there are currently no real differences in difficulty across exam boards, as Ofqual pressures them to be as similar as possible and by moderating papers before exams are sat^[vi]. Yes, all boards have different pass grades, but this doesn’t imply that one is easier than another^[vii]. Over the past decade there have been concerted efforts by Ofqual to ensure this^[viii]. For any one exam board to compete based on higher pass rates would therefore undermine the currency of their qualifications compared to the other boards^[ix].

Following Nick Gibb’s move to a unified exam board after the close call of OCR failing to mark their exams in time, many countered that a single unified exam board would risk this problem at a wider scale^[x]. If this happened under a unified exam board there would be system failure, and the consequences would be far graver. I am not compelled by this argument, as it implies that one institution can never be responsible for managing a system. This is clearly not the case given prominent examples like UCAS seem to overcome such an issue, and splitting UCAS is not a touted alternative.

In 2015, then OCR Chief Simon Lebus vigorously opposed a unified exam board, by claiming that any such move would be ‘Corbyn-esque’ in nature and an over exertion of politics in education^[xi]. He claimed it would be about Government simply wanting to get more involved in determining content standards. The exam boards were here shown to have a keen interest in preserving the status quo.

Around the same time as Lebus’ comments, there was a belief that such a unified exam board would present too much disruption whilst schools were already grappling with a complete overhaul of GCSEs after 2014^[xii]. It was believed that the historically established process of multiple boards would be difficult to reform and dismantle at this time of wider change^[xiii].

The case for a single, unified exam board

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On the surface a multi-board system may seem simply unnecessary, but what is the positive case for a single unified exam board?

Exam boards providing different content can result in an unnecessary fragmentation in education which sees 16-year-olds leave education without being taught the same things^[i]. This fragmentation can stifle best practice and expertise sharing across schools, with teachers being trained on exam board specific content and unable to share resources easily with colleagues from other schools. Hiring teachers can become more complicated in certain subjects as it cannot be presumed that teachers hold universal knowledge of content due to this variation across boards^[ii].

Whilst this syllabus variation is praised for diversifying the knowledge of students, there is no reason such variation cannot be streamlined under a unified board^[iii]. This would allow for a better provision of shared resources and expertise across schools, just with slightly fewer options. The curriculum is already bloated as it is, this doesn’t need to be worsened by the self-interested desire to appear different that exists between the exam boards as they compete for contracts.

Furthermore, without a unified board, it is hard to truly compare and analyse the performance of students across England. It is much harder to see if standards are improving, stagnating or going down^[iv]. How can we categorically compare results within a subject if not all students are sitting the same exam? Multiple exam boards merely add another level of unnecessary bureaucracy to this already complex task.

Bureaucracy would also be significantly reduced by alleviating the responsibility of Ofqual to ensure that each board is comparable in their different versions of the very same qualification^[v]. Under a unified exam board, Ofqual could focus more heavily on the single qualification being offered to ensure the very highest standard, without being bogged down by ensuring the compliance of three different boards.

Currently the different exam boards compete for experts in subjects to design their content. This could come at the detriment of overall examination quality. Consolidation would concentrate expertise and investment in research under a single institution and avoid unnecessary replication of functions across multiple boards and the administrative costs that come with that^[vi]. All experts in a subject could work together on the highest quality exam materials. At current expert assessors can be spread too thinly across the different boards which could dilute quality^[vii]. A unified board would allow for greater economies of scale in this sense.

A single exam board should not be driven by profit, with the aim being to provide the highest quality assessment system possible. The excess costs schools spend on the different exam boards and their board specific content materials could be better spent on other areas of teaching and learning^[viii]. As much as the boards at current claim their priorities are standards, there will always be the underlying incentives of market share and profits contending with this^[ix]. A single unified board funded by Government could place standards at the heart of efforts without question.

Final thoughts

This post has outlined arguments for and against whether the three exam boards should in the future be replaced by one, unified national board. There are undoubtedly merits to a multi-board system, but it’s useful to ask: would we really opt for such a system if we were to design an optimal exam system from scratch?

I’m inclined to answer no to that question. A unified board as seen in Finland and Singapore makes more logical sense from the offset.

It seems that the multi-board system has remained in place simply through historical precedent and a reluctance to overhaul the system due to potential disruption. This argument was enough to deter the coalition in the wake of their wider GCSE reforms in 2014, but I think it’s high time the Government looks again at the idea of having a single, unified exam board in England.

The core argument of competition driving up standards does not appeal to me. Not only has competition historically been seen to cause a possible dip in standards in the pursuit of profits, but there is no reason higher quality cannot be attained through expertise sharing and collaboration under one exam board. Moreover, in ensuring that the current multi-board system maintains standards, we have given an unnecessarily large bureaucratic role to Ofqual. Red tape could be drastically reduced by requiring oversight of one exam board. This could free the regulator to focus its efforts on the ensuring the highest standards of this single board, instead of ensuring compliance of all three boards to a minimum standard level.

An issue I wrestle with regularly as a tutor, is how little logical sense it makes for my students to each be sitting different maths exam papers as a result of the different exam boards, whilst all receiving the same headline result in Mathematics come results day. The papers are each different, and this offers no significant benefits but ultimately makes comparability across boards more difficult, if not ultimately unfair. All students should be sitting the same papers if we want a just assessment system in England. Equally, whilst some may say that the differing exam boards help to offer more content variety in subjects like History, it is clear that such a function of variety could be offered by a unified exam board.

So, whilst GCSE students are opening their results today, it’s worth considering whether in the future those grades really need to have AQA, OCR and Edexcel alongside them too.

^[i] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/why-having-one-exam-board-isnt-smart-sounds-gibb-ofqual-single-body/

^[ii] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/why-having-one-exam-board-isnt-smart-sounds-gibb-ofqual-single-body/

^[iii] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/why-having-one-exam-board-isnt-smart-sounds-gibb-ofqual-single-body/

^[iv] https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/why-its-finally-time-accept-we-need-just-one-exam-board

^[v] https://iea.org.uk/blog/a-single-exam-board-might-seem-a-tidy-solution-further-rationalisation-of-exams-provision-shoul

^[vi] https://iea.org.uk/blog/a-single-exam-board-might-seem-a-tidy-solution-further-rationalisation-of-exams-provision-shoul

^[vii] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/is-one-exam-board-per-t-level-the-testing-ground-for-a-levels/

^[viii] https://www.sec-ed.co.uk/content/blogs/a-single-exam-board/

^[ix] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/single-national-exam-board-would-be-a-corbynesque-solution-claims-ocr-head-a6690946.html

^[i] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/aug/09/exam-boards-students-a-level-results-nick-gibb-reform

^[ii] https://piacademy.co.uk/advice/gcse-boards-comparison/

^[iii] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/why-having-one-exam-board-isnt-smart-sounds-gibb-ofqual-single-body/