Break this racket of exam boards and publishers

Nik Darlington 10.15am

The Telegraph is on maneouvres again, this time against the exam boards. And like its ‘Hands Off Our Land’ campaign it is for a worthwhile cause.

Last month, an undercover investigation by the paper blew the lid off the corrupt and clandestine practice of exam seminars. It has prompted an inquiry from Ofqual, the examinations regulator, and the ire of the Education Secretary, Michael Gove. As I wrote for Total Politics at the time, the free market in exams is broken.

This week, the Telegraph printed comments by the incoming chairman of the Independent Schools Association, John Wood, who blamed the “aggressive commercialisation” of exam boards for undermining the integrity of examinations.

Mr Wood mentioned how exam boards make money from ‘official’ textbooks for the exams they set, something also being investigated by Ofqual.

Exam boards can be owned by publishers: for instance, Edexcel is owned by Pearson (also owner of the Financial Times, among others). These publishers then produce the ‘authorised’ textbooks.

“Surprise, surprise, the textbooks are written by the examiners,” says one teacher in the independent sector.

“These have the exam board stamp on the front, implying no others are worth buying. Indeed, it is almost impossible to find a publisher who will touch a new textbook.”

The Oxford University Press (OUP) produces some textbooks for exam boards and I am told that many teachers in the independent sector choose to use them in the classroom because they are well written, by authors who understand the subject and who are not merely teaching to the exam.

“Even then, I have been contacted by parents questioning my choice. And without the stamp of approval nor many past questions, these books struggle to sell.”

Ofqual is conducting a detailed investigation of exam boards’ commercial activities and intends to report later this year. That report cannot come soon enough.

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