ABSTRACT
Primary schools have undergone many changes in the past decade, in management strategies, in funding arrangements and in curriculum development and implementation. Perhaps the area that has had the most impact on the work of the school is the stronger focus on state-wide accountability for student outcomes, which has passed from the system as a whole to individual schools and teachers. This has brought about an intensification of effort in terms of assessing students, recording their progress and then reporting the outcomes of this progress, to parents, to the education authority and to the wider community. Regular testing based on procedures and instruments that are comparable across schools, computer-based recording of student progress and publicly available information derived from assessments are all new considerations for the modern primary school.
