ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the role that assessment and qualifications reform has assumed in overall reform policy in England, focusing particularly on the period 1980 to the present day. It also focuses on educational reform policy and accountability arrangements that have undue emphasis on assessment and qualifications. The diversity of arrangements is a feature of England that seldom is commented upon in analyses of reform and development. England has retained the 11-plus in some counties while others have varying forms of comprehensive education. The chapter then aims to extract matters associated with assessment, and with change in education. Finally, it discusses the critical realist perspectives, which help us to understand that some things are not arbitrary: the physiology of early and adolescent development, and the importance of complex language in cognition, and that other things will only hold true while certain other things are held constant.