The government introduced the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) in 1965[1] for the majority of students working below O Level standard, but the JMB – like all the other GCE exam boards – was not asked to administer the new qualification.

Despite the GCE boards also being regional, schools were free to choose which one they entered their students for exams with.

[1] In 1988,[1] the GCE O Level and CSE were merged to form a new qualification: the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).

This posed a problem, as, in England, the O Level and CSE had completely separate exam boards.

As CSEs were now extinct, the old CSE boards effectively ceased to exist outside their GCSE examining groups.