ABSTRACT
The Cambridge University Local Examinations Syndicate joined forces with the East Anglian Certificate of Secondary Education (C.S.E.) Examinations Board to form the first consortium to offer 16+ examination in five subjects - mathematics, geography, English, technical drawing and biology. The Schools Council, the teachers' unions and the C.S.E. examination boards themselves, provided the impetus for a movement, and certainly responded to it. Some of the features of the General Certificate of Education (G.C.E) were inevitably reproduced in C.S.E.: the secondary school curriculum was subject orientated, and it followed that the new examination had to be a single subject examination. Apart from the concept of national criteria, the new examination, to be known as the General Certificate of Secondary Education, differs in a number of important aspects from both the G.C.E. and C.S.E.: the target group is to be almost the whole of the school population.
