Curriculum and assessment in science education: the policy interface

The paper describes how a new national curriculum and assessment system for England and Wales was set up in 1988 and the frequent changes which it has endured since then. Curriculum specification attempted to broaden the aims of science teaching and to specify sequences for learning. Assessment policy struggled with attempts to enhance formative assessment and with tensions between external tests and teachers’ internal assessments. The story illustrates problems about progression in learning, about criterion referencing, about the weak state of formative assessment and about the optimum relationship between external testing and the formative and summative assessment roles of teachers. More fundamentally, it is suggested that, when asked to advise in a political process, professional educators may be tempted to propose innovations which are too radical to succeed within its imperatives of rapid and inexpensive change.