ABSTRACT
Richard Daugherty was a member of the School Examinations and Assessment Council policy committee on National Curriculum assessment. The Committee contrasted a broadly based process of assessment, commonly employed by teachers in their classrooms, with more focused tests undertaken to examine and measure specific elements of understanding, knowledge and skill. The introduction of standard assessment tasks has probably been the most contentious aspect of the National Curriculum. In Task Group on Assessment and Testing's view, two things were clear: that teachers would not have confidence in a system, or be committed to it, without active teacher involvement; and that achieving a trained teaching force would take time. TGAT discussed the possibility of 'scaling' a school's results to make allowances for the background factors. The passage of the Education Reform Act was followed by the establishment of two quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation to be responsible for administering the proposals relating to the National Curriculum.
