ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on assessment by describing, comparing and contrasting policies on assessment and accountability in various selected countries. It shows how paying attention to the social order of assessment itself has significant implications for the individual experiences in classrooms. The chapter looks at England in some detail as the assessment and its associated accountability developments project a highly salient frame of reference for both teachers’ and learners’ experience of assessing and being assessed. It considers the developments in assessment in Finland, Germany, the state of California in the US and the state of Victoria in Australia. These countries/states offer a useful lens through which one can begin to consider possible social order imperatives that shape local and individual levels, including the inter-personal and personal planes. Studies and national and international comparisons of the assessment and also classroom practice are understood as a measurement of quality control in German schools.
