ABSTRACT
G. Leckie and H. Goldstein, in a 2010 critical appraisal of government policy, contested the rationale, illustrating how government itself had failed to present data in a way that could be understood. They refer to Hong Kong, among many other school systems which have adopted ‘contextual value added’, and citing, as exemplary, the Tennessee value-added assessment system. The convention of putting ‘hard’ subjects in the morning is a tacit recognition of diminishing returns in energy and application over the course of the school day. Children learn when schools and teachers are able to create conditions which optimise opportunities for learning and teaching to meet. In a Newark, New Jersey, elementary school a poster at the entrance carries the words Learning begins here. Educators are accustomed to view the learning agenda of the school as an end in itself, rather than as a means for the moral and intellectual ‘filling out’ of learners as human beings.
