ABSTRACT
Already we have seen that assessment has several purposes - diagnosis, evaluation, grading. But these are not ends in themselves, of course. They are means towards further ends. What are those over-arching purposes? In this chapter we shall consider why assessment is carried out at all. How is it justified? (Later we must ask what else is achieved that may not be explicitly claimed for it or even welcomed by the people involved.) More ominously, we can ask the question so often posed by the sleuth in old-fashioned crime-stories when considering whom to suspect of the murder: 'Who benefits?'
