ABSTRACT
Comparability of standards, as represented by national assessment systems, for students in schools in the United Kingdom (UK), has been a major preoccupation of researchers and policy-makers alike for at least twenty-five years (see for example Forrest and Shoesmith, 1985). The late Desmond Nuttall referred to this obsession with comparability as the ‘British disease’. Bob Wood another prominent figure in UK public examinations research, made the following comments in looking back over twenty years of research into that obsession (Wood, 1987).
