ABSTRACT
In France, the development has been from a highly centralised system in which assessment control was vested in national, government-run selective examinations and personal teacher inspection. This has been replaced by a nominally more decentralised, positive control based on a reflexive relationship between teacher-conducted, continuous assessment according to nationally prescribed norms. Perhaps even more important than these attempts to make control more effective, however, is the growing association of educational administration in both countries with a corporate management approach. Such an approach is likely to disguise the essentially political nature of educational goals—in an ideology of scientific rationality. As the sheer size of the state machine makes it increasingly difficult for coercive or traditional bureaucratic modes of control to be effective on their own, it becomes more than ever necessary that some way be found of ensuring a system of normative order, of self regulating professionals who will nevertheless pursue goals identified by the state.
