ABSTRACT
After the Education Reform Act there was a lively debate in RE circles about assessment. Because of the subject’s unique status as a ‘basic subject’ it had been exempted both from nationally prescribed attainment targets and from compulsory centralized assessment procedures. But the Act allowed for locally prescribed targets, through the agreed syllabus, and locally binding assessment procedures could be applied. The question was-should we bother? In the ensuing debate the following points seemed to be central to the outcome:
the view by some that you could not assess RE, or that it was wrong to try, because that would take you into the semi-private realm of the child’s spirituality and belief; the view that assessment in RE would be unworkable except as a crude assessment of ‘knowledge about’ religion, e.g. that Sikhs wear five items beginning with K; a strong feeling against ‘testing’ in RE, especially in Key Stage 1; a strong feeling among many primary teachers that they were already grossly overburdened with assessments and assessment procedures and did not want more.
