ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the social functions of assessment at a more theoretical level in the light of such contrasting perspectives on the relationship between schooling and society. The drive for educational ‘efficiency’ through the maximum use of ‘the pool of ability’, the creation of opportunity for the deserving and the development of infallible techniques of identifying the said ‘deserving’, fitted extraordinarily well with the traditional socialist critique of inequality of the educational opportunity between social classes. Robinson criticizes the progressive liberal position in education for concentrating on the technical relations of the production and ignoring the social and economic relations of authority and control integral to both production and schooling in a capitalist society. In the insights of conflict theory lies an explanation for the repeated failure of the educational innovations informed by the liberal reformist ideology.
