The body that regulates examinations is to be made independent in a radical attempt to end the annual row about the dumbing down of school standards, The Times has learnt.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, will tell the Labour conference today that the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) will be given freedom from ministerial interference in a move to give parents, pupils, universities and employers confidence that exam standards are being maintained.

At the same time he will announce fresh moves to improve the teaching of the 3Rs, with a drive to help children with their spelling and handwriting skills.

The decision by Mr Balls to make the QCA independent is an attempt to echo Labour’s decision to make the Bank of England independent in 1997, a move that he had strongly recommended as Gordon Brown’s chief economic adviser.

He will tell Labour delegates that he wants GCSE and A-level students to be able to take pride in their A-grades without facing the continual carping by critics that their results are a devalued currency. The move would enable the QCA independently to monitor school standards, free from political interference, and would distance the government of the day from criticisms of involvement.

Although the QCA theoretically is independent from government at present, officials of the Department for Children, Schools and Families sit in on its board meetings to ensure that the department’s view is put forward.

Sir Anthony Greener, the QCA chair, currently reports regularly to ministers, who in the past have quashed QCA initiatives.

The move is likely to be widely welcomed in the education sector, especially by teaching unions and examination boards, which have fiercely defended school standards in the face of criticism from employers and universities.

The independence of the Bank was widely seen as one of Mr Brown’s most effective political moves. It was intended to show that the Bank of England could make interest-rate decisions untainted by political influence. Although the Government still sets targets on inflation, the Bank choses how these are to be achieved.

Mr Balls will also announce a new programme to help primary school children to improve their spelling and writing skills.

He will say that the current “every child a reader” and “everychild counts” are to be extended nationwide, meaning that 30,000 children will receive special help with their reading and arithmetic by the end of three years.

The extension will cost £144 million and Mr Balls will say that the scheme should now be extended to the third of the 3Rs — writing. New support is to be provided to ensure that every teacher uses the best methods, including one-to-one coaching, in areas of writing and spelling that primary school children find hardest to master.

Making the QCA independent would enable the Government to distance itself from the growing pressure for reform of the examination system.

Every year a record haul of A grades at A level prompts complaints from leading universities and employers that they are increasingly unable to distinguish the brightest candidates. This year, one in ten candidates achieved three A grades.

The pass rate for A levels has risen for 25 years in succession, with nearly three in ten candidates achieving three A grades this year and A-grades accounting for more than a quarter of all A-level marks.

To counter accusations that the A level no longer represents a gold standard, the Government has agreed to introduce an A* grade for the 2010 exams, which will be awarded to students who achieve 90 per cent plus.

This summer Mike Cresswell, the director-general of AQA, England's biggest exam board, conceded that a new A** could eventually be required as grade inflation continues and more pupils get the new top A* grade.

A similar pattern exists for GCSE results. The proportion of students gaining five A* to C grades in any subject rose from 45.1 to 63 per cent between 1997 and 2006.

Alan Smithers, of the University of Buckingham, said that the QCA’s independence would be very welcome. “An independent QCA would have far more credibility in establishing what is happening in education, not least because it would be detached and would exist at one remove from government targets,” he said.

One way in which the QCA could monitor standards would be to test a random sample, say 3 per cent of children in England, every year. The pupils would all be given the same test on the same day and would not be told the purpose of the tests. Question papers would be locked away until the next year, when the same paper would be taken by a different 3 per cent in different schools. “That would enable you to see if standards were being maintained on an annual basis,” Professor Smithers said.

Ken Boston, chief executive of the QCA, suggested this year that such a sample method, which is currently in use in Australia, would even be used to replace the national Key Stage tests sat by every children in England at ages 7, 11 and 14. But that was con-sidered a reform too far by the Government.

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