Assessment

In the world of educational change and innovation, assessment and testing are often divisive issues. Some countries look to assessment as an instrument for raising standards and for making schools accountable to society. But at the same time teachers who are concerned to improve learning often regard assessment and testing as negative influences and leave them out of their programmes for change. It was striking that the first accounts of most of the innovations in this study made no reference to assessment. In the final reports assessment is central to two of the innovations, but it is virtually ignored in most of the others.