ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses concerns and debates about the role and nature of assessment as a central aspect of education and schooling. It focuses largely on policy and practice in the English education system, whilst seeking to make links with practice in other nations. At the time of writing (late 2010), new and radical proposals for the organisation of schools and the curriculum are beginning to emerge from a new government. The ‘English way of doing things’ is therefore an important contextual starting point for this chapter which aims to outline the political and social purposes of assessment over the past 30 years, describe the main features of assessment systems currently on offer, clarify the relationship between formative and summative assessment and summarise some key findings from recent research about the effects of assessment on students’ ‘learning careers’.
