Augmenting neoliberal assessment practices: a critical analysis using the WPR approach

Bacchi’s ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ framework is applied to the 2023 report by England’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for Schools, Learning and Assessment in order to critically analyse assessment practices in English secondary schools. While the report frames its contribution as advocating for assessment reform, this article argues its recommendations highlight the entrenched neoliberal logic of performativity and accountability within policy discourse. By framing schools and teachers as the primary site of educational failure, the report perpetuates deficit discourses and obscures structural inequalities. Drawing on the work of, among others, Biesta and Ball, analysis reveals a notable silence around learners as active subjects, with proposed recommendations reinforcing rather than disrupting dominant governing rationalities. An alternative discourse is identified, one that gestures towards project-based assessment tasks, portfolios and learner profiles as tools for promoting the development of learners and creating the conditions for more fundamental change. By reimagining why we assess, what we value and who the learner is, we start to move away from governing education through performativity and towards cultivating it through purpose, identity and human potential.