ABSTRACT
Characteristic of the journal is its awareness of assessment within its social context. Whilst the explicit emphasis in this respect varies from article to article, underpinning all the analyses is a recognition that decisions about who and what is to be assessed, for what purpose and by what method, reflect a particular social context. In each case, however, the underlying principle is the same, namely that educational assessment must be understood as a social practice, an art as much as a science, a humanistic project with all the challenges this implies and with all the potential scope for both good and ill in the business of education. Assessment serves as a communicative device between the world of education and that of the wider society. This spectrum of communication ranges from the most informal of exchanges to the extremely formal and spanning everything from school reports to high-stakes public examinations.
