Under which king, Bezonian?

Hodgson, John

Abstract

Reading the recent Ofsted Curriculum Research Review of English shortly after the accession of a new monarch to the UK throne brings to mind Pistol’s reply to Justice Shallow when he tries to claim authority under the king: “Under which king, Bezonian?” (2Henry IV, v.iii). “Bezonian” might be applied to Ofsted’s strangely shallow “research review”, which casts grave doubt on the capacity of the government’s inspection agency to inform the curriculum.

Ofsted was set up in 1992 as a schools inspection agency alongside the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA). From 1997 it continued to exercise a separate function from SCAA’s successor, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). Both the SCAA and the QCA were quasi-autonomous organisations with a consultative role of working with the profession on the school curriculum. However, the functions and influence of the QCA were steadily reduced. In 2004, the National Assessment Agency took over the specific role of the delivery and administration of National Curriculum assessments; and in 2007 Ofqual, the government’s qualifications authority, assumed the regulation of examination and assessment boards. The remaining work of the QCA was transferred to the new Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA); the QCA was formally dissolved in 2010, when the QCDA and Ofqual gained statutory status.

• Journal Article Type: Editorial
• Acceptance Date: Sep 26, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Oct 17, 2022
• Publication Date: Oct 2, 2022
• Deposit Date: Nov 17, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 3, 2024
• Journal: English in Education
• Print ISSN: 0425-0494
• Electronic ISSN: 1754-8845
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 56
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 303-306
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/04250494.2022.2126142
• Keywords: Literature and Literary Theory, Linguistics and Language, Language and Linguistics, Education
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10109144
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/04250494.2022.2126142