[3] In 1982, Tattersall took a secondment from ASLEB to the Schools Council to research differentiated examinations in preparation for the proposed merger of O Level and CSE into what became the GCSE.

[3] The same year, the NWREB entered into a consortium with the ALSEB and three other local exam boards, forming the Northern Examining Association (NEA) to offer the new General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) qualification, which replaced the O Level and CSE from 1988.

By the late 1990s, Government policy was to reduce the number of exam boards in the UK, replacing them with larger awarding bodies offering vocational, as well as academic, qualifications.

[3][7] During her time at AQA, Tattersall was also chair of the Joint Council for General Qualifications, an umbrella group representing all British exam boards.

In this role, Tattersall sought to ensure that examiners' professional judgements, rather than statistics, were used to award grades when revised A Level exams were introduced in 2002.

[10] 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.

[3] In 2007, Tattersall was appointed the inaugural chair and chief regulator of Ofqual, the new exams 'watchdog', taking up her post on its formation on 8 April 2008.

[11][12][13] 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.

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.