ABSTRACT
A new National Curriculum is currently being introduced in England and Wales. As it is prescribed in the 1988 Education Act, this has four elements: the subjects which are to be taught; Attainment Targets which describe the skills which children should have and what they should know and be able to do; programmes of study which describe the essential matters, skills and processes to be covered; and assessment arrangements for these subjects. This chapter discusses that ideas about context-bound learning or the multi-source nature of learning and corresponding approaches might have played a role in the development of the context-based assessment procedures. The model for the structure of the Attainment Targets was determined by a working party, appointed by the government, called the Task Group on Assessment and Testing chaired by Paul Black.
