ABSTRACT
A recurring theme throughout this book has been the social, educational and political power of assessment which produces a number of attendant dilemmas and complexities. There are high political stakes in the design and use of assessment throughout the education system: it is used to certify and select people, to ration places at higher levels of education and training, as a factor in decisions about levels of funding for individual organizations, and to make institutions accountable. It is often these purposes which dominate teachers’ and learners’ perceptions about assessment. They also shape the way that the vocational curriculum and its various assessment regimes are organized and implemented. This has implications for how managers and teachers approach the whole issue of assessment. If political and funding requirements are emphasized at the expense of broader, more educational aims for assessment, summative, external purposes of assessment will dominate whatever the rhetoric says otherwise.
