The Diploma Disease: Still contagious after all these years?

The next two chapters take up the theme of how assessment shapes learning and teaching, and how it ‘makes up learners’ as a consequence of working for grades and qualifications. In the Introduction, we met successful student Ruth, who had worked out how to ‘play the game’ in order to get the qualifications that she needed to get on the university course she wanted. We also met Hannah, whose struggles to get the required level meant that she saw herself as a ‘nothing’, even though her other achievements were impressive. Here we will look at two of the processes which influence student identities like these: qualification chasing (chapter five) and accountability testing (chapter six). These represent the power of assessment to control what goes on in education and training, and how assessment shapes curriculum, teaching and learning. The focus of these chapters is on assessments used for the purposes of individual selection and for school accountability. In each case, the grade or certificate can become an end in itself – what is learned is less important. This is an instrumental view of assessment, which pervades much of teaching and learning worldwide. The task is then to see how it might be mitigated and more effective learning encouraged, and how we can generate more productive approaches to assessment and accountability.