Testing Tensions: the politics of educational assessment

This paper is concerned with the recent policy initiatives of a National Curriculum, and National Assessment and Testing. These policy intentions are placed in a socio‐political and economic context. It is argued that the two assessment cultures of school‐based teacher assessment (including pupil profiles and records of achievement) and centralised testing lend themselves to professional accountability and market accountability, respectively. The paper concludes that official policy which advocates both modes of assessment, if implemented, will produce intolerable tension within the process of schooling.