ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the changes that Northern Ireland and Wales have made to their General Certificate of Secondary Education – both countries going in a different direction from England, while retaining the qualification’s name – and interrogate them from students’ perspectives. It discusses the different expectations of groups of stakeholders regarding educational assessment and the use of assessment instruments. The book describes three emerging areas of confict in the use of assessment instruments in compulsory education in Switzerland: a conceptual, an evaluation and a teaching perspective. It presents the establishment of a successful teacher evaluation system as a problem with three dimensions: the political, the administrative and the professional. Governments set assessment standards policy in belief that learners’ assessment outcomes are a good measure of national educational achievement, and that a well educated citizenry ensures that the country will be internationally competitive.
