ABSTRACT
In 1988 when attainment targets and levels were introduced with the National Curriculum, there were no Key Stage 3 (KS3) English statutory assessments to accompany the new programmes of study. It was not until 1991 that the first Standard Assessments Tests (SATs) were phased in to the KS3 National Curriculum. By the early noughties, however, the SATs had taken on a life of their own and in KS3 English they became synonymous with the shorter writing task, the longer writing task, the reading paper and close analysis of two key scenes from a Shakespeare play. In the years following the prescriptive yet seminal moment when assessment was formally standardised in KS3 English through Assessing pupils' progress (APP). Assessment is the one area of this proposed KS3 curriculum model that has changed the most over the past two and a half years: partly influenced by changes on a national level and partly because of the evolving nature of the model itself.
