Locating 'English' as a subject within the Arts and taking literacy in the context of a pluralist society, with all that that entails for assessments that capture and do justice to 'funds of knowledge' among students and communities, this paper will seek to address the question: what are the issues in offering a defensible portrayal of achievement in literature and poetry in the primary classroom? The roles of content/knowledge, the teacher, the learner, the assessor, texts and contexts are key themes in the answer. The paper will explore tensions that arise from different perspectives of the subject - English as a set of cognitive-linguistic skills acquired by an individual or English as a set of social and cultural practices enacted by a group and how those conceptions connect with different types and purposes of assessment. Our overarching aim in the paper will be to synthesise relevant research literature in a way that will offer insights about culturally responsive assessment in poetry and literature at the primary phase of education.