ABSTRACT
This paper was written for presentation at the New Technologies for Higher Education Conference, University of Aveiro, Portugal, sponsored by the European Union in 1998, and again, under the title ‘Effective Evaluation: Why it is important and how to do it well’ at an EU Concertation Meeting in Brussels in 1999. It was then revised and extended for publication in 2001. Its origins explain its focus on higher education and the wider context of EU policy rather than UK policy as is the case in other chapters. Shortly before writing it I had heard Frank Coffi eld present his paper, ‘A tale of three little pigs: building the learning society with straw’ (Coffi eld 1998) and this gave me interesting insights into the inter-relationship between European and UK education policy.
