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The application of these criteria largely narrows down the scope of external examinations as here defined to education systems derived from nineteenth-century French and British models which were disseminated throughout the colonial era. The Matura tradition of some Central European entities comes close, although the Matura examinations were not usually ‘external’ in the sense that a central examining body devised and conducted them. They have, however, been incorporated into this book where there is a tendency towards greater standardisation through central controlling agencies—that is, where a process of externalisation is discernible.
The principal purpose of this book is not to present a defence of external examinations, nor is it to provide a forum for the now hackneyed ‘external versus internal assessment’ debate. The work proceeds from the pragmatic position that external examinations are a commonplace feature of formal schooling worldwide, and that in the course of their history, they have amassed a significant and influential following in numerous societies. Clearly, the arguments in their favour—the ‘level playing field’ they provide, the comparability of awards arising from them, and their quality assurance functions––are powerfully persuasive. External examinations are ‘reliable’ and ‘robust’ in the sense that, when conducted with impartiality and transparency, their ensuing qualifications are trusted by employers, higher education institutions and the public at large as credentials which can be consistently applied to successive cohorts. The first chapter of this work adds to these arguments a potent if perturbing consideration: the spectre of ‘education corruption’ to which properly conducted and widely trusted external examinations can act as a powerful antidote.
The next sixteen chapters present a series of case studies from around the globe. Chapters on national and state entities with established external examination systems exhibit common subheadings in order to facilitate the comparative overview that the book as a whole strives for. Any one of a number of criteria could have been used to organise these chapters into a sequence. In this instance, we chose to begin with France—given the celebratory opening lines of this foreword, that seemed auspicious—and England, the progenitor of most of the education systems described in this book.