Working Group for 14–19 Reform

The Working Group for 14–19 Reform was chaired by Mike Tomlinson, former Chief Inspector of Schools at Ofsted. It was formed in Spring 2003 in response to allegations that A-Level grades had been manipulated by some exam boards in order to maintain a consistent standard in the face of changes to the A-Level system. This scandal led to the resignation of the then Secretary of State for Education and Skills Estelle Morris.

This crisis was part of a longer-term concern amongst the British public and, more importantly, British industry that GCSEs and A-Levels were no longer sufficiently taxing to provide a genuine measure of the ability of students. In other words, examinations were seen to be getting easier, a theory partly supported by increasingly impressive results, year-on-year throughout the 1990s.