ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the purposes of assessment and their relationships to teaching and learning. We discuss briefly changes in assessment practice and reporting in the late twentieth century.Both units in Chapter 6 discuss the concepts of validity and reliability and their ongoing tensions, together with the roles of formative and summative assessment.Assessment is needed to provide information about individual pupils’ progress, to help the teacher devise appropriate teaching and learning strategies, to give parents helpful information about their child’s progress, and to compare pupils and schools across the country.This chapter discusses the extent to which one test can provide this information and considers the design and application of tests in relation to their purpose.
