Leading article: No tea party for Dr Boston

The time has come today for Dr Ken Boston, the new chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, to emerge from two weeks of purdah following his organisation's largely discredited report into the A-level marking fiasco.

Dr Boston, who arrived to take up his new post from Australia only a week before the QCA went into print to clear itself of the suggestion that it had acted improperly by pressurising the exam boards to reduce the pass rate, has some ground to make up before relations between him and heads and teachers can be described as cordial. It was intemperate of him to call those who complained about this summer's results "ill informed" and to make the bold statement that this summer's pupils had got the grades they had earned. Next week we will know whether that latter statement was true or not.

He would be well advised to try to mend fences at today's annual conference of the QCA. How about him learning some of the subtle arts of diplomacy? At least, however, he has the support of Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, who regards him as a refreshing new broom able to take the QCA into a new era. We do have a certain amount of sympathy for Mr Boston, who within hours of taking up his new post has been pitchforked into one of the biggest controversies ever to hit the United Kingdom's education system. According to those who had dealings with him as the head of the education service in New South Wales, he is a man who does not suffer fools gladly and speaks his mind.

Ironically, these are qualities that would be much in demand if, as seems likely, the Government opts for a new independent body to take over the role of regulating the existing exam boards or a new single examination authority in the wake of the independent inquiry into the A-level affair. We could do with a really independent-minded person as an examination regulator as well someone who is a good administrator. It may be that the job that Dr Boston ends up doing is very different from the role he envisaged when he first set foot on these shores only a few weeks ago.