ABSTRACT
Schools, and teachers, are under attack from a variety of directions: Black Paper writers, and others, complain about lowering of standards; employers complain that school leavers are ill-prepared for the world of work; at the other extreme Illich (1971) and the de-schoolers suggest that schools do more harm than good. Many others might feel that schools should not be attacked but should be subject to close public scrutiny. The idea of ‘accountability’ in education has been under discussion since the early 1970s but was probably given a boost by such events as the William Tyndale inquiry of 1975–6 (see Auld, 1976). The Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) recently established by the Department of Education and Science is another expression of this concern about standards and accountability.
