ABSTRACT
It is unfortunate that evaluation has become such a specialist activity that ordinary practitioners often lack the skills or at least the confidence to undertake it. The situation is somewhat analogous to the house-buying system, which Michael Joseph railed against in his popular book, The Conveyancing Fraud. Joseph's mission in life was to encourage us all to do away with the services of solicitors and do our own conveyancing. His message was simply this: it's easy; anybody can do it; just use your common sense and get on with it. I want to argue here that it is time for careers practitioners to take steps to wrest evaluation from the grasp of the professional evaluators and, instead, embrace it as a tool for improvement and change. Of course, there may always be some demand for professional evaluators but, at the present time, I would argue that a great deal of the funding spent on evaluation contracts could be put to better use by channelling it directly into the development of professional practice.
