ABSTRACT
As the title indicates, this chapter is concerned with standards in primary education and it is as well at the outset to be clear about what we mean by that. The word can take on more than one interpretation. On the one hand, standards can be thought of as a level against which one tries to make a judgement. In high jumping terms that would be the height of the bar and the observations of individuals trying to jump over it. In educational terms it would involve ascertaining how many people met or exceeded a certain criterion; but another way of looking at standards is to take them as the level that one has reached. How high can an individual jump? It is that way of thinking about standards which is used in this chapter.
