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Assessment and testing in Scottish primary schools
Author(s) -
Harlen Wynne,
Malcolm Heather
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
the curriculum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.843
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1469-3704
pISSN - 0958-5176
DOI - 10.1080/0958517960070208
Subject(s) - summative assessment , formative assessment , league table , confusion , documentation , function (biology) , test (biology) , political science , mathematics education , psychology , computer science , economics , paleontology , classical economics , evolutionary biology , psychoanalysis , biology , programming language
This paper examines assessment policy and practice in Scotland. When proposals for introducing national testing in Scotland were announced in 1987, it was promised that there would be no central collection of results and so no league table of schools could be based on them. The arrangements for testing were changed in 1993 so that the tests have the function of providing teachers ‘with the means to check their own assessment’. Despite this, the authors of this paper reveal a considerable confusion of the formative and summative roles of assessment, partially as a result of the way the system was introduced.