What role should exam boards have in testing and assessment?
18. Exam boards (Awarding Bodies) are concerned primarily with the provision of qualifications to enable individual students to progress to subsequent stages of education or employment. The use of qualifications for this purpose has the effect of ensuring that, as far as possible, those who engage in further study or particular jobs are equipped to do so. In this way, qualifications contribute to greater efficiency in the employment of the nation’s human capital than the alternatives (essentially influence, patronage and random selection). Equally important, qualifications contribute to social cohesion by providing a widely accepted and essentially meritocratic basis for sharing educational and vocational resources. 19. As a result, the Awarding Bodies are the organisations in the UK with the greatest knowledge and most practical experience of educational assessment. AQA, for example, prepares assessment materials and organises examinations on a national scale every year (we set, mark
