ABSTRACT
Assessments drive teaching and learning, especially where they are high-stakes university entrance tests, which amplify the importance of the choice of qualification not only for students, but for schools. For teachers, formal assessment continues to be associated with both heavy workload and, where results are used for accountability, their own stress. Even in that apparent educational utopia, Finland, the density of structured testing is far higher than common accounts usually suggest, with teachers concerned about the workload it represents. The dilemma for educators is that the kind of skills that are easiest to teach and easiest to test, are also the skills that are ea siest to digitize, automate and outsource. As students, teachers and schools have come under more and more pressure to increase students' scores on tests and examinations, it is perhaps not surprising that testing has come under criticism, with complaints that students are tested too much, and with demands that the amount of testing be reduced.
