Exam crisis: Leading light under threat from scandal

Sir William Stubbs, the chairman of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, is the man whose job will be on the line if Mike Tomlinson's investigation concludes the body put any pressure on the exam boards to tamper with results.

He has been described as "the greatest administrator in education of his generation" but his no-nonsense manner has made him unpopular with some. His long career in education has taken him from teaching to local government and on to be one of Britain's leading education advisers.

Sir William, 64, is married to Marie Stubbs, a distinguished headmistress who recently retired after successfully turning around the school where the headteacher Philip Lawrence was murdered, St George's, in Maida Vale, west London.

The couple have three daughters, Nadine, Hilary and Fiona. Sir William was born on 5 November 1937, and educated at Workington Grammar School in Cumbria and St Aloysius College, Glasgow.

He studied at Glasgow University, for his bachelor of science and doctorate, and at the University of Arizona.

After marrying in April 1963, he worked for Shell Oil in California between 1964 and 1967 before returning to his native Scotland where he taught for the next five years.

A series of local government posts followed from 1972 to 1977 before he became chief executive of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) between 1982 and 1988.

He was chief executive of the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council for four years before leading the Further Education Funding Council between 1992 and 1996. He was appointed chairman of the QCA when it was established in October 1997.

The chief executive, Professor David Hargreaves, announced his surprise departure last year after just over a year in the job.

Sir William, who was knighted in 1994, has been chan- cellor of Thames Valley University since autumn 2001.

At his appointment as chancellor he was hailed by the educationist Lord Dearing as the "greatest administrator in education of his generation". Lord Dearing said : "But he is more than an administrator, he is an initiator, a man of courage and a man of integrity."

Sir William has been robust in his defence of his authority's role in the A-level marking debacle.

He rejected the allegations that the QCA had interfered in the grade-setting process as "completely without foundation" and insisted he had personally gone to great lengths to ensure the exam boards understood exactly what was required of them.

Yesterday morning, though, he bowed to the seriousness of the allegations facing the QCA and issued a statement calling for an independent inquiry, shortly before Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that she had decided to do exactly that.

He also acknowledged there might have been "something untoward" in the marking of this year's A-level examination papers, after previously insisting such suggestions were unfounded.