ABSTRACT
Standards are norms against which educational performances can be measured and assessed (Pring 1992). Given that standards can be used to compare performances, they have a role in comparing students or schools in respect of the norm that the standard expresses. The ability to measure performances, however, does not entail any ability to compare standards. This leaves open the possibility that it may not be possible to compare the standards of maths in, say, the UK and the USA (synchronic comparison), or the standards in Australia now and in the nineteenth century (diachronic comparison). Pring argues that standard-comparison is logically impossible. In
order to compare standard A with B; one would need a further standard with which to compare them, which would, in turn, require a further standard of comparison and so on ad infinitum. However, the argument is invalid. Standards A and B can be compared using a meta-standard C in order to determine which of A and B require higher performances. All that C has to do is to compare the requirements of A and B. So if C is a maths test and if standard A requires a student to reach 50 per cent on C to pass, and B requires 70 per cent then, according to C, standard B is higher than standard A (C. Winch 1996: ch. 6). The performances are the actual grades that students achieve on C judged either by the standards of A or B. Comparison of standards either diachronically or synchronically is, therefore, possible. However, Pring is right to point to the internal relationship
between standards and curricula. In this sense, standards are waymarks in the progression along a curriculum in which material builds on what has been previously taught and what is more demanding. Standards should thus be distinguished from learning outcomes, such as are found in National Vocational Qualifications, which are behavioural descriptions whose application to someone depends solely on whether that person satisfies the description, not whether they have followed a curriculum. The notion of a learning outcome in this sense is, however, self-contradictory. On the one hand, learning outcomes are organised in levels which assume progression in difficulty; on the other, one should be able to achieve a learning outcome at any level, irrespective of whether one has learned something beforehand! These contradictory assumptions imply a central design flaw in assessment regimes based on learning outcomes (Brockmann et al. 2007).
