When Ed Balls, schools secretary, first proposed creating a new regulator for the exams system, a perceived conflict of interest was one of the main reasons put forward. In a 2007 paper setting out its plans to establish Ofqual, the Government said that the fact that the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority reported to ministers made it harder for the public to be sure of its independence. And the fact that the QCA developed national tests and exams and was supposed to regulate them gave rise to potential problems in the public mind, and notably a possible “conflict of interest” between those two roles. Now anRead More →