Dates

• Existence: 1857 - 1999

Biography

The Delegacy of Local Examinations was established by Statute of Convocation on the 18th of June 1857. In its first report, it stated that its function was to ‘confer a great benefit on that large class of persons who cannot afford, or do not require, a University education for their children, by undertaking to examine boys, about the time of their leaving school. Such an examination, it was urged, would give a definite aim to the schoolmasters, and a great stimulus to the scholars.’ It was not intended that the Delegacy would prescribe any specific course of instruction, but that it would only test results.



Oxford Delegates, a governing council of the University of Oxford, first met in July 1857 and the Rev. J. E. Sewell of New College was appointed Honorary Secretary. The first examinations were held in the week of 21st of June 1858, at centres in Oxford, London, Bath, Bedford, Birmingham, Cheltenham, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Southampton. Religious Knowledge examinations were optional and unclassified, unlike for the Cambridge Locals. Consequently, the exams attracted more non-conformist candidates. Women were admitted as candidates from 1867.



Provision was made for a Junior Examination (candidates under the age of 15) and a Senior Examination (candidates under the age of 18). Success in the Senior Examination carried the right to the title of Associate in Arts of the University of Oxford. All candidates, both Junior and Senior, had to pass a Preliminary Examination. The Senior Examinations were replaced by National School Certificate qualifications in 1918 and the Junior Examinations were withdrawn in 1945. In 1951 the National School Certificate qualifications were replaced with the General Certificates of Education – the School Certificate by Ordinary Level and the Higher School Certificate by Advanced Level, the first national single subject qualifications. In the 1980s there was an increase in the government regulation of exams, with a focus on the advancement of public examinations. Consequently, from 1988 onwards only the GCE Advanced Level examinations were set in the UK, Ordinary Level examinations continued for overseas centres. There were fewer overseas centres, but they had a wide geographical range including Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe (Malta).



A range of certificate and non-certificate examinations were set by the Delegacy which included examinations for individual classes and schools, county scholarship examinations, Oxford University Examinations for Women and the Use of English (a joint examination run with Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board and University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate). In 1967 the British Association of Recognised English Language Schools (ARELS) formed the charitable body of the ARELS Examinations Trust (AET), the English Language exams were run by the Oxford Delegacy until 1998. ARELS had a focus on the improvement of skills in the use and comprehension of spoken English and the techniques employed showed marked improvements on the conventional methods of oral examining.



The Southern Regional Examination Board was established in 1963 for Certificate of Secondary Education examinations in southern counties, a lower-level examination for candidates under the age of 16. In 1988 the government replaced the O level and CSE with a single General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). In preparation for this, the Delegacy absorbed the SREB in 1985 and joined the Southern Examining Group (SEG), which was one of the six groups of examining bodies established by the government within England, Wales and Northern Ireland.



In 1995 the Delegacy joined the UCLES Group, initially running its AS and A Level qualifications under the name Oxford and Cambridge Examinations and Assessments Council (OCEAC), a committee of the UCLES Group. In 1997 UODLE was recognised in the formation of OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA examinations), a separate business unit of the UCLES Group to administer school examinations in the UK.



The first office the Delegacy exclusively occupied was constructed in 1897 and expanded in 1957, at 12 Merton Street, Oxford. This was the Delegacy’s permanent home until 1965, when they moved to the larger Ewert House in Summertown, Oxford. The Delegacy functioned at Ewert House until mid-1999.

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