ABSTRACT
The Primary Assessment, Curriculum and Experience (PACE) project was established in 1989 to monitor the impact of the momentous changes then being put in place following the passing of the 1988 Education Reform Act. Funded by ESRC in three stages (1989-92; 1992-4 and 1994-7), the PACE project was uniquely placed to document the unfolding story of change in primary schools and, in particular, to analyse the impact of the new National Curriculum and Assessment requirements on headteachers, teachers and pupils. In 1994 we described the PACE project as ‘one of the many stepping stones in the quest to understand the nature of the educational enterprise and hence, how to provide for it most effectively’ (Pollard et al. 1997:4). Thus our research has been designed to help understand the origin and significance both of the policy initiatives imposed by Government and those which were the product of the attempts by teachers and headteachers to reconcile these requirements with their professional values and understandings. Why were these policy initiatives set in motion in the England of the late 1980s, and what, ultimately, is likely to be their significance for the nature and quality of pupils’ learning? How can a case study of English primary education, and the way in which assessment is approached, illuminate more widespread changes in the power relations and modes of control of modern societies at the end of the century?
