ABSTRACT
The impossibility of separating teaching from assessment can be observed wherever teaching occurs. As the teacher spoke to the class, or to individual children, she was helping by judging how well they were doing, how they could do better, and how she could organise the work to help. Much of this assessment was instantaneous and spontaneous. Teachers take responsibility for organising learning; assessment should be the source of information to make this organisation effective. That requires teaching, learning and assessment to be conceived as inseparable in theory as they are in practice. Any model of assessment in schools that can help children has to provide information on how work is being tackled and how it can be done more effectively. The tendency for the assessment of products to take precedence over looking at processes can be illustrated through the way continuous assessment often works out in practice.
