Education Overhaul: Exam Boards

This isn’t something that I had originally included in my plans to change the education system, however with the recent news about exam board ‘cheating,’ I feel I should add my views to the topic.

Two examiners were suspended yesterday after claims they had tipped off teachers about questions that were likely to feature in next year’s exam papers. Exam boards have also come under criticism in recent years for making exams easier, and over the summer for making too many errors in exam papers which affected tens of thousands of students.

There are currently four exam boards in England and Wales: AQA, OCR, Edexcel and the Welsh Joint Education Committee. The question I have to ask is, why do we need 4 exam boards? I am not alone in this view, and I’ll admit that I am in fact only thinking about this now as growing pressure is placed on the government to close down the existing exam boards and create a government led single board.

Now you could argue that having multiple exam boards actually produces higher quality exams as they compete against each other to win over schools and students. However, in reality, the exam boards seem to be winning clients by making their exams easier and easier, with schools mixing and matching to get the most generous exam board for each subject.

This cannot be good for our education system, especially when some examiners are giving away hints and tips to schools to help their students achieve higher grades. Therefore, I fully back the proposal, which Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg, has also pledged his support to, which suggests we create one exam board for the whole country. All students should sit the same exams so that a fairer comparison between them can be made and only the brightest, most talented students can win a place at university as intelligence will shine through and not the ability of the schools to pick the easiest exams.

The Opinionated Genius