Kathleen Tattersall

Kathleen Tattersall (11 April 1942 – 23 January 2013) was a British educationalist, specialising in examination administration. She was the leader of five examination boards in the United Kingdom before becoming the first head of exams regulator Ofqual.

Early life Kathleen Tattersall was born in Burnley on 11 April 1942, the only child of Ellen Tattersall (née Mason) and Tom Tattersall. Tattersall was educated at Paddock House Convent Grammar School in Oswaldtwistle. She then went on to study at the University of Manchester, gaining a bachelor's degree in 1963, Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) in 1964 and, later, a Master of Education degree in 1975.

Teaching career Upon completing her PGCE, Tattersall spent the next seven-and-a-half years as a teacher, working in three different types of school from 1964. She began as a history teacher at the school she attended herself, Paddock House Convent Grammar School in Oswaldtwistle. This move was short-lived, as Tattersall found working at a primary school exposed 'all [her] faults and limitations as a teacher'.

Tattersall jumped directly from the smallest CSE board to the largest when she became head of the neighbouring North West Regional Examinations Board (NWREB) in 1985. AQA, the UK's largest awarding body, appointed Tattersall as its first director general on 1 April 1998.

On 30 September 2003, Tattersall retired from AQA. Tattersall soon came out of retirement, however, to become chair of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, a professional body for examiners, in 2005 and held this role until 2008. Initially, Ofqual operated as part of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in London, but moved to Coventry and became a non-ministerial government department in 2010, still led by Tattersall.

Tattersall resigned from Ofqual with immediate effect on 2 July 2010, less than two months after the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government came to power.

Later life Tattersall was critical of exam reforms under Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove in the early 2010s. In response to Gove's later-aborted plans to scrap GCSEs and replace them with a new qualification only accessible to higher ability students, she said:

No one who is responsible for the education of young people should be proud to introduce a system which will result in a greater number of students leaving school with no qualifications. Education is about encouraging success and the raising of aspirations, not the writing off of a generation, which is what this new, untried, untested policy, based on prejudice and untruths, will bring about.

In 2011, Tattersall became chair of the board of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds.

In November 2012, Tattersall became president of the Association for Educational Assessment–Europe.

Tattersall's work in governance at the University of Manchester and its predecessors was also honoured. In 1997, Tattersall joined the council of her alma mater, the Victoria University of Manchester, and chaired its audit committee until the institution merged with UMIST to form the University of Manchester in 2004. After the merger, Tattersall became a member of the university's board of governors until 2011. In recognition of these 14 years of service, Tattersall was awarded the University of Manchester's Medal of Honour in 2012, though died before she could be presented with it.