Single national exam board would be 'a Corbynesque solution,' claims OCR head

Simon Lebus says the Government proposal 'could lead to greater political involvement' in education

Simon Lebus said his analogy was based on Jeremy Corbyn being 'an old school socialist' (Getty Images)

A government move towards establishing a single national exam board would be "an improbably Corbynesque solution for a Conservative government to want to implement", the head of one of the country’s biggest exam boards has claimed.

Ministers have announced they are consulting over a radical review of how Britain’s exam boards operate - with one option being for the Government to set up a single national exam board - following concerns over grade inflation and the standard of questions.

Simon Lebus, chairman of the OCR (Oxford and Cambridge and Royal Society of Art) exam board, warned the move “could lead to a greater degree of political involvement in the education service which I think only a few people would find desirable”.

In a speech to a conference in London, he added: “It all sounds like an incredibly Corbynesque solution for a Conservative government to want to implement.”

He said his analogy was based on the fact that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was “an old school socialist - he is talking about renationalising the railways, this would be a nationalisation of the exam boards”.

He said grade inflation had largely been checked by exams regulator Ofqual insisting on “comparative outcomes” in exams between one year and another “so on the face of it this is more likely to be about a desire on the part of the Government to get more actively involved in determining content standards”.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the exam boards’ interest in maintaining the present system was “evident”. However, he argued any further major change would be “a bad thing” at a time when the system is grappling with a radical overhaul of GCSEs and A-levels.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “We recognise the need to ensure that the exam board system operates effectively which is why we are considering long-term reforms to the exam board system. As always, we would listen carefully to the views of teachers, parents and employers.”